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By GUY THORNE 

"WHen It Was DarK 

The Story of a Great Conspiracy 
12°. (By mail, $1.35) . . JVet,%i.20 

-A. Lost Ca-use 
12° ...... $1.50 

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 

New York and London 


THE SOCIALIST 


BY 


, ,„GUY THORNE 

AUTHOR OF “WHEN IT WAS DARK,” ETC 



G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
Ubc IknicKerbocfier press 


1909 




Copyright, igog 


BY 


WARD, LOCK AND COMPANY 






TTbe Itnkftcrbocftcr press, IRew IPorft 


TO 


JOHN GILBERT BOHUN LYNCH 

Souvenir of February 8th, 1909 



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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER I 

CONCERNING HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF PADDING- 
TON ....... I 

CHAPTER II 

“hair like ripe corn” . . . . i8 

CHAPTER III 

A MOST SURPRISING DAY .... 28 

CHAPTER IV 

THE MAN WITH THE MUSTARD-COLOURED BEARD 43 

CHAPTER V 

“to inaugurate a revolution!” . . 56 

CHAPTER VI 

THE GREAT NEW PLAN ..... 68 

CHAPTER VII 

KIDNAPPING UPON SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES . 80 

CHAPTER VIII 

“in cellar cool!” ..... 92 

CHAPTER IX 

MARY Marriott’s initiation .... 103 


V 


VI 


Contents 


CHAPTER X page 

NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD . . . ♦ 

CHAPTER XI 

THE DISCOVERY . . . . . .126 

CHAPTER XII 

AT THE bishop’s TOWN HOUSE . . . I39 

CHAPTER XIII 

NEW FRIENDS : NEW IDEAS . . . . I49 

CHAPTER XIV 

AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE . . . . 169 

CHAPTER XV 

THE MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY . . . I90 

CHAPTER XVI 

ARTHUR Burnside’s views .... 201 

CHAPTER XVII 

THE COMING OF LOVE . . . . .212 

CHAPTER XVIII 

A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS . . . 234 

CHAPTER XIX 

TROUBLED WATERS ..... . 256 

CHAPTER XX 

THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST . . . .269 


Contents vii 

CHAPTER XXI 

IN THE STAGE BOX AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE 279 

CHAPTER XXII 

THE SUPPER ON THE STAGE .... 29I 

CHAPTER XXIII 

POINTS OF VIEW FROM A DUKE, A BISHOP, A VIS- 
COUNT, AND THE DAUGHTER OF AN EARL 304 

CHAPTER XXIV 

“ LOVE CROWNS THE deed” .... 315 

CHAPTER XXV 

EPILOGUE ....... 326 



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THE SOCIALIST 


CHAPTER I 


CONCERNING HIS GRACE THE DUKE OP PADDINGTON 



HERE are as many social degrees in the peer- 


A age as there are in the middle and lower 
classes. 

There are barons who are greater noblemen 
than earls, viscounts who are welcomed in a 
society that some marquises can never hope to 
enter — ^it is a question not of wealth or celebrity, 
but of family relationships and date of creation. 

When, however, a man is a duke in England, 
his state is so lofty, he is so inevitably apart from 
every one else that these remarks hardly apply 
at all. Yet even in dukedoms one recognises 
there are degrees. There are royal dukes, stately 
figureheads moving in the brilliant light which 
pours from the throne, and generally a little 
obscured by its refulgence. These have their 
own serene place and being. 

There are the political dukes. Cabinet-made, 
who are solemnly caricatured through two genera- 


2 


The Socialist 


tions of Punch, massive, Olympian, and generally 
asleep on the front benches of the House of Lords. 

And every now and then it happens that there 
are the young dukes. 

The fathers of the young dukes have lived 
to a great age and married late in life. They 
have died when their sons were little children. 
For years it seems to the outside public as if 
certain historic houses are in abeyance. Nothing 
much is heard of these names, and only Lon- 
doners who pay enormous ground rents to this 
or that Ducal estate office realise what a long 
minority means. 

From time to time paragraphs find their way 
into the society papers telling of the progress of 
this or that young dukeling at Eton. The para- 
graphs become more in evidence when the lad 
goes to Oxford, and then, like a suddenly-lit 
lamp, the prince attains his majority. 

Paragraphs in weekly papers expand into 
columns in all the dailies. The public suddenly 

realises that the Duke of , a young man of 

twenty-one, owns a great slice of London, has an 
income of from one to two hundred thousand 
pounds a year, and by the fact of his position is 
a force in public affairs. For a week every one 
talks about the darling of fortune. His pictures 
are in all the journals. His castle in Kent, his 
palace in Park Lane, his castle in Scotland, his 
villa at Monte Carlo, are, as it were, thrown open 
to the inspection of the world. The hereditary 


3 


The Duke of Paddington 

jewels are disinterred by popular rumour from 
the vaults at Coutts’ Bank. The Mysore Nagar 
emerald that the third duke brought from India 
glitters once more in the fierce light of day. The 
famous diamond tiara that the second duke 
bought for his duchess (in the year when his 
horse Strawberry Leaf” won the Derby and 
His Grace eighty thousand pounds) sparkles as 
never before. Photographers seek, and obtain, 
permission to visit the famous picture galleries 
at Duke Dale, and American millionaires gasp 
with envy as they read of the Velasquez, the 
three Murillos, the priceless series of Rembrandt 
genre pictures, and the “Prince in Sable” of Van- 
dyck, owned by a youth who has in all probability 
never seen any one of them. 

The man in the street has his passing throb of 
envy, and then, being a generous-minded fellow 
in the main, and deeply imbued with loyalty to 
all existing and splendid institutions, wishes his 
lordship luck and promptly forgets all about him. 

What the man on the street — a very different 
sort of person — says, is merely a matter which 
polite people do not hear, for who heeds a few 
growls in cellars or curses in a cul-de-sac? 

Women are even more generous, as is their 
dear mission to the world. If your dukeling is a 
pretty lad, presentable and straight as caught by 
the obsequious camera, they give him kind 
thoughts and wonder who the fortunate girl will 
be. Who shall share the throne of Prince For- 


4 


The Socialist 


tunatus? On whose white and slender neck shall 
that great Indian emerald give out its sinful 
Asiatic fire? On whose shining coronet of hair 
shall rise that crown of diamonds that the brave 
horse won for the “bad old duke” on Epsom 
Downs ? 

And then all the stir and bother is over. Some 
newer thing engages the public mind. Another 
stone is thrown into another pool; the ripples 
upon the first die away, and the waters are tran- 
quil once more. 

Prince Fortunatus has ascended his throne, and 
the echoes of the ceremonial trumpets are over 
and gone. 

John Augustus Basil FitzTracy was the fifth 
Duke of Paddington, Earl of Fakenham in Nor- 
folk, and a baronet of the United Kingdom. 

His seats were Fakenham Hall, at Fakenham, 
Castle Trink, N. B., and the old Welsh stronghold, 
near Conway, known as Carleon, which had come 
to him from his mother s aunt, old Lady Carleon 
of Lys. 

In regard to his houses, there was, first and 
foremost, the great square pile in Piccadilly, 
which was almost as big as the Duke of Devon- 
shire’s palace, and was known as Paddington 
House. There was an old Saxon house near 
Chipping Norton, in Gloucestershire, which was 
used as a hunting-box — the late duke always 
having ridden with the Heythrop. There was 


The Duke of Paddington 


5 


also a big blue, pink-and-white villa upon the 
Promenade des Anglais at Nice — ^the late duke 
liked to spend February among the palms and 
roses of the Riviera, though it was said that the 
duchess never accompanied him upon these 
expeditions to the sun-lit shores of the Mediter- 
ranean. 

The Duke of Paddington was not a great coun- 
try nobleman. Fakenham was some three thou- 
sand acres, and though the shooting was excellent, 
as is the shooting of all the big houses which 
surround Sandringham Hall, the place in itself 
was not particularly noteworthy. Nor did the 
duke own coal mines, while no railways had 
enriched him by passing through any of his 
properties. 

The duke’s enormous revenues were drawn 
from London. He and their graces of West- 
minster and Bedford might well have contended 
for a new title — ^Duke of London. If extent of 
possessions and magnitude of fortune could alone 
decide such an issue the Duke of Paddington 
would have won. 

A huge slice of the outer West End — ^anywhere 
north of Oxford Street' — belonged to him. 

His income was variously stated, but the only 
truth about it, upon which every one was agreed, 
was that it was incredibly large. 

There was a certain modest, massive stone 
building in the Edgware Road where the duke’s 
affairs were conducted. It was known as the 


6 


The Socialist 


FitzTracy Estate Office, forty clerks were regularly 
employed there, and only old Colonel Simpson, 
late of the Army Service Corps, and now chief 
agent to the duke, knew what the actual income 
was. 

Possessor of all this, — and it is but the barest 
epitome, — ^the duke was twenty-three years of 
age, had no near relations, and was just finishing 
his university career at Oxford. 

Ever3rthing that the human mind can wish for 
was his; there was hardly anything in the world, 
worthy or unworthy, that he could not have by 
asking for it. 

The duke was an undergraduate of St. Paul’s 
College, Oxford. Much smaller than Christ 
Church, Magdalen, or New College, St. Paul’s is, 
nevertheless, the richest and most aristocratic 
foundation in the university. It was a preserve 
of the peerage ; no poor men could afford to enter 
at Paul’s, and it was even more difficult for the 
sons of rich vulgarians to do so. 

On one dull, cold morning at the end of the 
October term the duke came out of his bedroom 
into the smaller of his two sitting rooms. It was 
about ten o’clock. He had cut both early chapel 
or its alternative roll-call — ^necessities from which 
even dukes are not exempt if they wish to keep 
their terms. 

The duke wore an old Norfolk jacket and a 
pair of grey flannel trousers. His feet were thrust 
into a pair of red leather bath slippers. He was 


7 


The Duke of Paddington 

about five feet ten in height, somewhat sturdily 
built, and deliberate in his movements. His 
head was thickly covered with very dark red 
hair. The eyes were grey, and with a certain 
calm and impassivity about them — ^the calm of 
one so highly placed that nothing can easily af- 
fect him ; one sees it in the eyes of kings and queens. 
The nose was aquiline, and thin at the nostrils, 
the nose of an aristocrat; the mouth was large, 
and pleasant in expression, though by no means 
always genial. There was, in short, something 
Olympian about this young man, an air, a manner, 
an aroma of slight aloofness, a consciousness of 
his position. It was not aggressive or pronounced, 
but it was indubitably there. 

In the majority of colleges at Oxford under- 
graduates have only two rooms. In Paul’s, more 
particularly in what were known as the new 
buildings, men had three, a bedroom, a dining- 
room or small sitting-room, in which breakfast 
and lunch were taken, and a larger sitting-room. 

The duke came out of his bedroom into the 
smaller room. It was panelled in white through- 
out. Let into the panels here and there were 
first impressions of famous coloured mezzotints 
by Raphael Smith, Valentine Green, and other 
masters. They had been brought from the 
portfolios at Paddington House, and each one 
was worth three hundred pounds. 

The chairs of this room were upholstered in red 
leather — a true vermilion, and not the ordinary 


8 


The Socialist 


crimson — ^which went admirably with the white 
walls and the Persian carpet, brick-dust and 
peacock blue colour, from Teheran. A glowing 
fire of cedar logs sent a cheerful warmth into 
the room, and the flames were reflected in the 
china and silver of a small round table prepared 
for breakfast. 

Although it was November, there was a great 
silver dish of fruit, nectarines, and strawberries, 
grapes and peaches, all produced in the new 
electric forcing houses which had been installed 
at the duke’s place at Fakenham. There was 
no apparatus for tea or coffee. In some things 
the duke was a little unusual. He never drank 
tea or coffee, but took a glass of thin white wine 
from Valperga. The tall yellow bottle stood on 
the table now, and by its side was a fragile glass 
of gold and purple, blown in Venice three hund- 
red years ago. 

The duke crossed the room and the larger one 
that opened out of it. He pushed open the swing 
door — ^the heavy outer “oak” lay flat against 
the wall — ^and shouted down the staircase for his 
“scout.” 

Despite the ineradicable belief of some popular 
novelists, there are no bells at Oxford, and duke 
or commoner must summon his servant in the 
good old mediaeval way. 

In a minute the man appeared with breakfast. 
He had previously brought his master a printed 
list from the kitchens when he called him. Gar- 


9 


The Duke of Paddington 

dener was an elderly, grey-haired man, clean- 
shaven, and confidential of manner. He had 
served many young noblemen on staircase number 
one, and each and all had found him invaluable. 
He had feathered his nest well during the years, 
and was worth every penny of ten thousand 
pounds. A type produced nowhere in such 
completeness and perfection as at Oxford or 
Cambridge, he represented a certain definite 
social class, a class more hated by the working 
man than perhaps any other — ^the polite parasite ! 

“Beastly weather. Gardener,” said the duke 
in a voice which every one found musical and 
pleasant, a contented, full-blooded voice. 

“It is indeed, sir,” said Gardener, as he ar- 
ranged two silver dishes upon the table* — “very 
dull and cold. I was told that there would be 
skating on Port Meadow as I came into college 
this morning.” 

“Well, I don’t think it will tempt me,” said 
the duke. “You understand thoroughly about 
lunch?” 

“Thoroughly, sir, thank you. Do you wish 
anything else now, sir?” 

“Nothing more, Gardener. You can go.” 

“I thank your grace,” said the scout, and left 
the room. Gardener had brought the art of 
politeness to a high point. Indeed, he had ele- 
vated it to a science. He always made a dis- 
tinction, thoroughly understood and appreciated 
by his masters, between himself and the ordinary 


lO 


The Socialist 


flunkey or house servant. He called a duke or a 
marquis “sir” in general address, reserving the 
title for the moment of leaving the room, thus 
showing that he did not forget the claims of rank, 
while he was too well-bred to weary his hearer 
by undue repetition. 

The duke began his breakfast — a chop and a 
poached egg. The young man was by no means 
of a luxurious turn of mind as far as his personal 
tastes were concerned. Simplicity was the key- 
note of many of his actions. But he was very 
punctilious that everything about him should 
be “just so,” and had he dined on a dish of lentils 
he would have liked them cooked by Escoffler. 

There was a pile of letters by his plate. He 
opened them one by one, throwing most of them 
on to an adjacent chair for his secretary- — who 
called every day at eleven — ^to answer. 

One of the letters bore the cardinal’s hat, which 
is the crest of Christ Church College, and was 
from the duke’s greatest friend in the university. 
Viscount Hayle. 

This was the letter: 

“My dear John, — My father and sister arrived 
to-night, and, as I supposed, they will be delighted 
to lunch to-morrow. You said at one, did n’t 
you? I have been dining with them at the Ran- 
dolph, but I have come back to college, as I must 
read for a couple of hours before I go to bed. 

“Yours, 

“Gerald.” 


The Duke of Paddington ii 

Gerald, Viscount Hayle, was the only son of 
the Earl of Camborne, who was a spiritual as well 
as a temporal peer inasmuch as he was the Bishop 
of Carlton, the great northern manufacturing 
centre. 

Lord Hayle and the Duke of Paddington had 
gone up to Oxford in the same term. They were 
of equal ages, and many of their tastes and opin- 
ions were identical, while the remaining differ- 
ences of temperament and thought only served 
to accentuate their strong friendship and to give 
it a wholesome tonic quality. 

The duke had met Lord Camborne once only. 
He had never stayed at the palace, though often 
pressed to do so by Lord Hayle. Something or 
other had always intervened to prevent it. The 
two young men had not known each other during 
their school days- — ^the duke had been at Eton, 
his friend at Winchester — and their association 
had been simply at the university. 

Now the bishop, who was a widower, was 
coming to Oxford for a few days, to be present 
at a reception to be given to Herr Schmolder, 
the famous German Biblical scholar, and was 
bringing his daughter, Lady Constance Cam- 
borne, with him. 

As he ate his nectarine the duke wondered what 
sort of a girl Lady Constance was. That she 
was very lovely he knew from general report, 
and Gerald also was extremely good-looking. 
But he wondered if she was like all the other 


12 


The Socialist 


girls he knew, accomplished, charming, some- 
times beautiful and always smart, but- — stereo- 
typed. 

That was just what all society girls were ; they 
always struck him as having been made in ex- 
actly the same mould. They said the same sort 
of things in the same sort of voice. Their thoughts 
ran in grooves, not necessarily narrow or limited 
grooves, but identical ones. 

Before he had finished breakfast the duke’s 
valet entered. The man was his own private 
servant, and of course lived out of college, while 
there was a perpetual feud between him and old 
Gardener, the scout. 

The man carried two large boxes of thin wood 
in his hands. 

“The orchids have come, your grace,” he said. 
“They were sent down from the shop in Picca- 
dilly by an early train in answer to my telegram. 
I went to the station this morning to get 
them.” 

“Oh, very well, Proctor,” said the duke. 
“Thank you. Just open the boxes and I will 
look at them. Then you can arrange them in the 
other room. I sha’n’t have any flowers on the 
table at lunch.” 

In a minute Proctor had opened the boxes and 
displayed the wealth of strange, spotted blooms 
within — monstrous exotic flowers, beautiful with 
a morbid and almost unhealthy beauty. 

The duke was a connoisseur of orchids. “Yes, 


The Duke of Paddington 


13 


these will do very well,” he said. “Now you 
can take them out.” 

The man, a slim, clean-shaven young fellow, 
with dark eyes and a resolute jaw, hesitated a 
moment as if about to speak. 

The duke, who had found a certain pleasure in 
thinking of his friend’s sister and wondering if 
she would be like her brother, had been lost in a 
vague but pleasing reverie in fact, looked up 
sharply. He wanted to be alone again. He 
wanted to catch up the thread of his thoughts. 
“Well?” he said. “I think I told you to go, 
Proctor?” 

The valet flushed at his master’s tone. Then 
he seemed to make an effort. “I beg your grace’s 
pardon,” he said. “I wish to give you my 
notice.” 

The duke stared at his valet. “Why, what 
on earth do you mean?” he said. “You’ve 
only been with me for nine months, and I have 
found you satisfactory in every way. You 
have just learnt all my habits and exactly how 
I like things done. And now you want to leave 
me! Are you aware, Proctor, that you enjoy 
a situation that many men would give their ears 
for?” 

“Indeed, your grace, I know that I am for- 
tunate, and that there are many that would envy 
me. ” 

“Then don’t talk any more nonsense. What 
do I pay you? A hundred and twenty pounds 


14 


The Socialist 


a year, is n’t it? Well, then, take another twenty 
pounds. Now go and arrange the orchids.” 

'‘I am very sorry, your grace,” Proctor said. 
“But I do not seek any increase of wages. I 
respectfully ask you to accept my month’s notice. ” 

A certain firmness and determination had come 
into the valet’s voice. It irritated the duke. It 
was a note to which he was not accustomed. 
But he tried to keep his temper. 

“What are your reasons for wishing to leave 
me?” he said, asking the direct question for the 
first time. 

‘ ‘ I have been successful with a small invention, 
your grace. I occupy my spare time with me- 
chanics. It is an improved lock and key, and a 
firm have taken it up.” 

“Have they paid you?” said the duke. 

“A certain sum down, your grace, and a royalty 
is to follow on future sales.” 

“I congratulate you, I ’m sure,” the duke said, 
with an unconsciously contemptuous smile, for 
he shared the not uncommon opinion among 
certain people that there is something ludicrous 
in the originality of a servant. “No idea you 
were such a clever fellow. But I don’t see why 
you should want to leave me. Because you are 
my servant it won’t interfere with you collecting 
your royalties or whatever they are.” 

The duke was a kind-hearted young man enough. 
He did not mean to wound his valet, but he had 
never been accustomed to think of such people 


15 


The Duke of Paddington 

as quite human' — ^human in the sense that he 
himself was human — and his tone was far more 
unpleasant than he had any idea of. 

The valet flushed up. Then he did an extra- 
ordinary thing. He took two five-pound notes 
from his pocket and placed them upon the table. 

“That is a month’s wages, your grace,” he said, 
“instead of a month’s notice. I am no longer 
your servant, nor any man’s.” 

As he spoke the whole aspect of the valet 
changed. He seemed to stand more upright, 
his eyes had a curious light in them, his lips were 
parted as one who inhales pure air after being 
long in a close room. 

The duke’s face grew pale with anger. “What 
do you mean by this?” he said in a voice which 
was a strange mixture of passion and astonish- 
ment. 

“Exactly what I say, sir,” Proctor answered. 
“That I am no longer in your service. I have 
done all that is legally necessary to discharge 
myself. And I have a word to say to you. You 
are not likely to hear such words addressed to 
you again, until your class and all it means is 
swept away for ever. You sneer at me because 
I have dared to invent something, to produce 
something, to add something to the world’s 
wealth and the world’s comfort. What have you 
ever done? What have you ever contributed to 
society? I am a better man than you are, and 
worth more to society, because I ’ve worked 


i6 


The Socialist 


for my living and earned my daily bread, even 
though fortune made me your body servant. But 
I ’m free now, and, mark what I say, read the 
signs of the times, if one in your position can have 
any insight into truth at all! Read the signs 
of the times, and be sure that before you and I 
are old men we shall be equal in the eyes of the 
world as we are unequal now 1 There are n’t 
going to be any more drones in the hive. Men 
are n’t going to have huge stores of private prop- 
erty any more. You won’t be allowed to own 
land which is the property of every one.” 

He stopped suddenly in the flood of high- 
pitched, agitated speech, quivering with excite- 
ment, a man transformed and carried away. 
Was this the suave, quiet fellow who had brushed 
the clothes and put studs into the shirts? With 
an involuntary gesture the duke passed his hand 
before his eyes. He was astounded at this sudden 
volcanic outburst. Nothing, as Balzac said, is 
more alarming than the rebellion of a sheep. 

But as Proctor’s voice died away his excite- 
ment seemed to go with it, or at any rate long 
habit and training checked and mastered it. 
The man bowed, not without dignity, and when 
he spoke again his voice was once more the old 
respectful one. “I beg your grace’s pardon,” 
he said, “if I have been disrespectful. There 
are times when a man loses control of himself, 
and what is beneath the surface will out. Your 
grace will find everything in perfect order.” He 


17 


The Duke of Paddington 

withdrew without another word and passed out 
of his master’s life. 

The duke was left staring at the masses of 
orchids which lay before him on the table. 

When Gardener, the scout, entered he found 
the duke still in the same position — ^lost in a sort 
of day-dream. 


CHAPTER II 


HAIR LIKE RIPE CORN 


HE duke was reciting his adventure with the 



1 valet to his three guests, but he glanced 
most often at Lady Constance Camborne. 

No, the society journals and society talk 
had n’t exaggerated her beauty a bit' — she was 
far and away the loveliest girl he had ever seen. 
He knew it directly she came into the room with 
Lord Hayle and the bishop, the influence of such 
extraordinary beauty was felt like a physical 
blow. The girl was of a Saxon type, but with 
all the colouring accentuated. The hair which 
crowned the small, patrician head in shining 
masses was golden. But it was not pale gold, 
metallic gold, or flaxen. It was a deep, rich gold, 
an “old gold,” and the duke, with a somewhat 
unaccustomed flight of fancy, compared it in his 
mind to ripe corn. Her eyebrows were very 
dark brown, almost black, and the great eyes, 
with their long black lashes, were dark as a 
southern night. Under their great coronet of 
yellow hair, and set in a face whose contour was 
a pure and perfect oval, with a skin like the inside 
of a seashell, the contrast was extraordinarily 


“ Hair Like Ripe Corn ” 


19 


effective. Her beautiful lips had the rare lines 
of the unbroken Greek bow, and their colour was 
like wine. She was tall in figure, even as though 
some marble goddess had stepped down from 
her pedestal in the Louvre and assumed the 
garments of the daughters of men. Some people 
said that, beautiful as she was in every way, her 
crowning beauty was her hands. She had sat to 
Pozzi, at Milan, at the great sculptor’s earnest 
request, so that he might perpetuate the glory 
of her hands for ever. Mr. Swinburne had 
written a sonnet, shown only to a favoured few 
and never published, about her hands. 

The duke talked on. Outwardly he was calm 
enough, within his brain was in a turmoil entirely 
fresh to it, entirely new and unexpected. He 
heard his own voice mechanically relating the 
incident of Proctor’s rebellion, but he gave hardly 
a thought to what he said. For all he knew he 
might have been talking the most absolute 
nonsense. 

He was lost in wonder that one living, moving 
human being could be so fair! 

He felt a sort of unreasoning anger with his 
friend. Lord Hayle. Why had n’t Gerald intro- 
duced him to his sister before? Why had all 
this time been wasted? — quite forgetting the 
repeated invitations he had received to stay with 
the Cambornes. 

“Well, what did you do in the end, John?” 
said Lord Hayle. “Did you kick the fellow out? 


20 The Socialist 

I should have pitched him down the staircase, 
by Jove!” 

“As a matter of fact, I did nothing at all,” 
said the duke. “I was too surprised. I just 
sat still and let him talk; I was quite tongue-tied.” 

“More ’s the pity,” said the young viscount, 
a lean, sinewy lad, who rowed three in the ’Varsity 
boat. “I should have made very short work 
of him.” 

“Don’t be such a savage, Gerald,” Lady Con- 
stance answered. “It was very rude, of course; 
but from what the duke says, the man was not 
exactly what you would call impudent, and he 
apologised at the end. And nowadays every one 
has a right to his own opinions. We don’t live 
in the middle ages any longer.” 

Her voice was like a silver bell, the duke 
thought, as the girl voiced these somewhat re- 
publican sentiments. A silver bell, was it? No, 
it was like water falling into water, like a flute 
playing in a wood at a great distance. 

“My daughter is quite a Radical, Paddington,” 
said Lord Camborne, with a smile. “She ’ll 
grow out of it when she gets a little older. But 
I found her reading the Fabian Essays the other 
day; actually the Fabian Essays T ' — ^the bishop 
said it with a shudder. “And she met John 
Burns at a ministerial reception, and said he was 
charming!” 

“It ’s all very well for Constance,” said Lord 
Hayle; “a girl plays at that sort of thing, and if it 


“ Hair Like Ripe Corn” 


21 


amuses her it hurts nobody else. However much 
Connie talks about equality, and all that, she ’d 
never sit down to dinner with the butler. But 
it ’s quite another thing when all these chaps are 
getting elected to Parliament and making all 
these new laws. If it is n’t stopped, no one will 
be safe. It ’s getting quite alarming. For my 
part, I wish a chap like Lord Kitchener could 
be made Dictator of England for a month. He ’d 
have all the Socialists up against a wall and shoot 
them in no time. Then things would be right 
again.” 

Lord Hayle concluded in his best college de- 
bating society manner, and drank a glass of hock 
and seltzer in a bloodthirsty and determined 
manner. 

The bishop, a tall, portly man, with a singularly 
fine face and extreme graciousness of manner — 
he was most popular at Court, and it was said 

would certainly go to Canterbury when Dr. 

died, — ^laughed a little at his son’s vehemence. 

“That would hardly solve the problem,” he 
said. “But it will solve itself. I am quite sure 
that there is no real reason for alarm. The 
country is beginning to wake up to the real char- 
acter of the Socialist leaders. It will no longer 
listen to them. Men of sense are beginning to 
perceive that the great fact of inequality as be- 
tween man and man is ever3rwhere stamped in 
ineffaceable characters. Men are not equal, and 
they never will be while talent, and talent alone. 


22 


The Socialist 


produces wealth. Democracy is nothing but a 
piece of humbug from beginning to end' — a trans- 
parent attempt to flatter a mass of stupid medi- 
ocrity which is too dull to appreciate the language 
of its hypocritical and time-serving admirers. 
These contemptible courtiers of the mob no more 
believe in equality than the ruin-bringing dema- 
gogues of ancient Athens did. One only has to 
watch them to see how eager they are to feather 
their nests at the expense of all the geese that will 
stand plucking. Observe how they scheme and 
contrive to secure official positions so that they 
may lord it over the general herd of common 
workers. They have their own little game to 
play, and beyond their own self-interest they do 
not care a straw. Knowing that they are unfit 
to succeed either in commercial or industrial 
pursuits, they try to extend the sphere of govern- 
mental regulation. What for ? To supply them- 
selves with congenial jobs where they won’t be 
subject to the keen test of industrial and com- 
mercial competition, and will be less likely to be 
found out for the worthless wind-bags that they 
are!” 

The bishop paused. He had spoken as one 
having authority; quite in the grand manner, 
bland, serene, and a little pompous. He half- 
opened his mouth to continue, looked round to 
recognise that his audience was a young one, and 
thought better of it. He drank half a glass of 
port instead. 


'‘Hair Like Ripe Corn ” 


23 


The conversation changed to less serious mat- 
ters, and in another minute or so Gardener entered 
to say that coffee was ready in the other 
room. 

The “sitter,” to use the Oxford slang word, 
was very large. It was, indeed, one of the finest 
rooms in the whole of Paul’s. Three tall oriel 
windows lighted it, it was panelled in dark oak, 
and there was a large open fire-place. It was a 
man’s room. Luxurious as it was in all its 
furniture appointments and colouring, all was 
nevertheless strongly masculine. The rows of 
briar pipes, in their racks, a pile of hunting crops 
and riding switches in one corner, a tandem horn, 
the pictures of dogs and horses upon the walls, 
and three or four gun-cases behind the little black 
Bord piano, spoke eloquently of male tastes. 

Though it is often said, it is generally quite 
untrue to say, that a man’s rooms are an index 
to his personality. Few people can express 
themselves in their furniture. The conscious 
attempt to do so results in over-emphasis and 
strain. The ideal is either canonised or vul- 
garised, and the vision within is distorted and 
lost. At Oxford, especially, very few men succeed 
in doing more than attaining a convention. 

But the duke’s rooms really did reflect himself 
to some extent. They showed a certain freshness 
of idea and a liking for what was considered and 
choice. But there was no effeminacy, no over- 
refinement. They showed simplicity of tempera- 


24 The Socialist 

ment, and were not complex. Nor was the duke 
complex. 

Lady Constance was peculiarly susceptible to 
the influences of material and external things. 
She was extremely quick to gather and weigh im- 
pressions- — ^the room interested her, her brother’s 
friend interested her already. She found some- 
thing in his personality which was attractive. 

The whole atmosphere of these ancient Oxford 
rooms pleased and stimulated her, and she talked 
brightly and well, revealing a mind with real 
originality and a gentle and sympathetic wit 
most rare in girls of her age. 

‘ ‘ And what are you going to do in the vacation ? ’ ’ 
the bishop asked the duke. 

‘ ‘ For the first three or four weeks I shall be in 
town ; then I ’m going down to Norfolk. I sha’n’t 
stay at Fakenham, Lord Leicester is putting 
me up ; but we are going to shoot over Fakenham. 
I can’t stay all alone in that great place, you 
know, though I did think of having some men 
down. However, that was before the Leicesters 
asked me. Then I am to be at Sandringham 
for three days for the theatricals. It is the first 
time I have been there, you know.” 

“You ’ll find it delightful,” said the bishop. 
“The King is the best host in England. On the 
three occasions when I have had the honour of 
an invitation I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. 
Where are you staying when you are in town— 
at Paddington House?” 


“ Hair Like Ripe Corn ” 


25 


'‘Oh, no! That would be worse than Faken- 
ham! Paddington House was let, always, during 
my minority, but for two years now there have 
just been a few servants there, but no one living 
in the house. My agent looks after all that. No, 
I am engaging some rooms at the Carlton. It ’s 
near everywhere. I have a lot of parties to go to, 
and Claridge’s is always so full of German grand 
dukes 

‘ ‘ But why not come to us in Grosvenor Street ? ” 
said the bishop. “You Ve never been able to 
accept any of Gerald’s invitations yet. Here is 
an opportunity. I have to be in town for three 
or four weeks, at the House of Lords and the 
Westminster conference of the bishops. You ’d 
much better come to us. We ’ll do our best to 
make you comfortable.” 

“Oh, do come, John!” said Lord Hayle. 

“Yes, please come, duke,” said Lady Constance. 

“It ’s awfully good of you. Lord Camborne,” 
said the duke; “I shall be delighted to 
come.” 

It was a dark and gloomy afternoon — indeed, 
the electric bulbs in their silver candelabra were 
all turned on. But suddenly it seemed to the 
duke that the sun was shining and there was bird 
music in the air. He looked at Lady Constance. 
“I shall be delighted to come,” he said again. 

They chatted on, and presently the duke found 
himself standing by one of the tall windows talking 
to his friend’s sister. Lord Hayle, himself an 


26 


The Socialist 


enthusiastic amateur of art, was showing his 
father some of the treasures upon the walls. 

“How dreary it is to-day- — ^the weather, I 
mean,’' — said the girl. “There has been a dense 
fog in town for the last three days, I see by the 
papers. And through it all the poor unemployed 
men have been tramping and holding demonstra- 
tions without an3rthing to eat. I can’t help 
thinking of the poor things.” 

The duke had not thought about the unem- 
ployed before, but now he made a mental vow 
to send a big cheque to the Lord Mayor’s fund. 

“It must be very hard for them,” he said 
vaguely. “I remember meeting one of their 
processions once when I was walking down 
Piccadilly.” 

“The street of your palace!” she answered 
more brightly. “Devonshire House, Paddington 
House, and Apsley House, and all the clubs in 
between! It must be interesting to have a 
palace in London. I suppose Paddington House 
is very splendid inside, is n’t it ? I have never 
seen more of it than the upper windows and the 
huge wall in front.” 

“Well, it is rather gorgeous,” he said; “though 
I never go there, or, at least, hardly ever. But 
I have a book of photographs here. I will show 
them to you. Lady Constance, if I may. So far 
we ’ve succeeded in keeping them out of the 
illustrated magazines. ” 

“Oh, please do!” she said. “Father, the duke 


“ Hair Like Ripe Corn ” 


27 


is going to show me some pictures of the rooms 
of his mysterious great place in Piccadilly.” 

As she spoke there was a knock upon the door, 
and the scout came in with a telegram upon a 
tray. 

“I thought I had better bring it at once, sir,” 
he said ; “ it ’s marked ‘ urgent ’ upon the envelope. ’ ’ 

With an apology, the duke opened the flimsy 
orange-coloured wrapping. 

Then he started, his face grew rather paler, and 
he gave a sudden exclamation. ‘ ‘ Good heavens ! ’ ’ 
he said, “listen to this: 

“ ‘Large portion front west wing Paddington 
House destroyed by explosion an hour ago. Bomb 
filled with picric acid discovered intact near 
gateway. The smaller Gainsborough and the 
Florence vase destroyed. Please come up town 
immediately. 

“ ‘Simpson.’” 

There was a dead silence in the room. 


CHAPTER III 


A MOST SURPRISING DAY 


ORD CAMBORNE, Lord Hayle, and Lady 



Constance stared at the duke in amazement 
as he read the extraordinary telegram from 
Colonel Simpson. Lady Constance was the first 
to speak. “And you were just getting the book 
of photographs!” she said in a bewildered voice, 
“the photographs of Paddington House, and 
now ” 

“Read the wire again, John,” said Lord Hayle. 

The duke did so; it was quite clear: 

“ ‘Large portion front west wing Paddington 
House destroyed by explosion an hour ago. 
Bomb filled with picric acid discovered intact 
near gateway. The smaller Gainsborough and 
the Florence vase destroyed. Please come up 
town immediately. 


Simpson.’” 


“The smaller Gainsborough — ^that ’s the famous 
portrait of Lady Honoria FitzTracy,” said Lord 
Hayle suddenly. “Why, it ’s the finest ex- 
ample of Gainsborough in existence!” 


A Most Surprising Day 29 

He grew pale with sympathy as he looked at 
his friend. 

“It isn’t in existence any more, apparently,” 
said the duke. “I wish the Florence vase had 
been saved. My father gave ten thousand pounds 
for it — not that the money matters — but, you 
see, it was the only one in the world, except the 
smaller example in the Vatican.” 

The bishop broke in with a slight trace of im- 
patience in his voice. “My dear young men,” 
he said, “surely the great question is: Who has 
perpetrated this abominable outrage ? What does 
it all mean? What steps are being ” 

He stopped short. Gardener had entered with 
another telegram. 

“Man arrested on suspicion, known to belong 
to advanced socialist or anarchist group. Can 
you catch the fast train up? There is one at six. 
I will meet you with car. 

“Simpson.” 

“Well, here is a sort of answer,” said the duke, 
handing the telegram to the bishop. “It appears 
that the thing is another of those kindly and 
amiable protests which the lower classes make 
against their betters from time to time.” 

“Just what I was saying,” young Lord Hayle 
broke in eagerly, “just what I was saying a few 
minutes ago. It ’s all the result of educating 
the lower classes sufficiently to make them dis- 


30 


The Socialist 


contented and to put these scoundrelly socialists 
and blackguards into Parliament. They ’ll be 
trying Buckingham Palace or Marlborough House 
next! Probably this is the work of those unem- 
ployed gentry whom I heard Constance defending 
just now.” 

“It ’s a bad business,” said Lord Camborne 
gravely; “a very black, bad business indeed. 
Paddington, you have my sincerest sympathy. I 
am afraid that in the shock of the news we may 
have been a little remiss in expressing our grief, 
but you know, my dear boy, how we all feel for 
you.” 

He went up to the duke as he spoke, a grand 
and stately old man, and shook him warmly by 
the hand. 

“Yes, John,” said Lord Hayle, “we really are 
awfully sorry, old chap.” 

Lady Constance said nothing, but she looked 
at her host, and it was enough. He forgot the 
news, he forgot everything save only the friend- 
ship and kindliness in her eyes. 

“I suppose you will go up to town by the six 
o’clock train?” Lord Hayle said. 

“I suppose I must, Gerald,” the duke replied. 
“I must go and get leave from the dean later 
on. I expect I shall have to stay the night. It ’s 
not an inviting day for London, is it?” 

“Do you know, duke, that I think you are 
taking it remarkably well,” Lady Constance said 
with a sudden dazzling smile. “I should have 


31 


A Most Surprising Day 

been terribly frightened, and then cried my eyes 
out about the vase and the picture. And as for 
Hayle — well, I think I can imagine the way Hayle 
would have behaved.” 

“Well, of course, I ’m horribly angry,” the 
duke said, “and such a thing means a great deal 
more to society in general than its mere personal 
aspect to me. But I can’t somehow feel it very 
nearly; it seems remote. I should realize it far 
more if any one were to steal or break an5rthing 
in these rooms here — ^things I constantly touch 
and see, things I live with. I have so many 
houses and pictures and things that I never see; 
they don’t seem part of one.” 

“I can quite understand that,” said the bishop; 
“but that will all be changed some day, please 
God, before very long. You are only on the 
threshold of life as yet, you know.” 

He smiled paternally at the young man, and 
there was a good deal of meaning in his smile. 
The duke, not ordinarily sensitive about such 
things, blushed a little now. He was quite aware 
to what Lord Camborne referred. 

The bishop, astute courtier and diplomatist 
that he was, marked the blush, pretended not to 
notice it, and was secretly well pleased. He 
himself was earl as well as bishop, he was wealthy, 
he was certain of the Primacy. His daughter, 
whom he loved and admired more than any 
other living thing, was a match for any one with 
her rank and wealth and loveliness. He longed 


32 


The Socialist 


to see her happily married also. At the same 
time, good man as he was, he was by his very 
nature and training a worldly man. 

If, therefore, the two young people fell in love 
with each other — well, it would be a very charm- 
ing arrangement, to say the least of it. Lord Cam- 
borne thought. For, far and away above all 
other fortunate young noblemen, the duke was 
the greatest parti of the day; he stood alone. 

“I Ve got three hours or more before the train 
goes,’' said the duke, “and I can dine on board* 
there ’s a car, I know. Now, do let ’s forget this 
troublesome business. I ’m so sorry. Lady Con- 
stance, that it should have happened while you 
were here. Let ’s shut out this horrid afternoon.” 

He spoke with light-hearted emphasis, with 
gaiety even. Despite what had happened he felt 
thoroughly happy, his blood ran swiftly in his 
veins, his pulses throbbed to exhilarating meas- 
ures. Oh, how beautiful she was! How gra- 
cious and lovely! 

He went to the windows and pulled the heavy 
crimson curtains over them, shutting out the 
wan, grey light of the November afternoon. 

He made Gardener bring candles — innumer- 
able candles — to supplement the glow of the 
electric lights. More logs were cast upon the fire 
— logs of sawn cedar wood which gave flames of 
rose-pink and amethyst. The noble room was 
illuminated as if for a feast. 

Lord Hayle entered into the spirit of the thing. 


33 


A Most Surprising Day 

con amore. His spirits rose with those of his 
friend, and his sister also caught the note, while 
Lord Camborne, smoking a cigar by the fire, 
watched the three young people with a benevolent 
smile. 

Lady Constance had been sitting by the piano. 
“Do you play. Lady Constance?” the duke asked. 

“She ’s one of the best amateur pianists I ’ve 
ever heard,” said Lord Hayle. 

“Do play something, Lady Constance. What 
will you give us?” 

“It depends on the sort of music you like. 
Do you like Chopin?” 

“lam very fond of Chopin indeed.” 

“I ’ll tell you wh,at to play, Connie,” said Lord 
Hayle eagerly. “Play that wonderful nocturne, 
I forget the number, where the bell comes in. 
The one with the story about it.” 

“A story?” said the duke. 

“Yes; don’t you know it, John? Chopin had 
just come back from his villa at Majorca- — come 
back to Paris at a time when Georges Sand would 
have nothing more to do with him. He was 
living close to Notre Dame. He had a supper 
by appointment, but began to write his nocturne 
and forgot all about the time. He was nearing 
the end when the big bell of the cathedral began 
to toll midnight. He realised how late it was, 
and forced himself to finish the thing in a hurry. 
He wove the twelve great ‘clangs’ into the theme. 
It ’s marvellously romantic and Gothic. One 


3 


34 


The Socialist 


seems to see Victor Hugo’s dwarf, Quasimodo, 
upon the tower, drinking in the midnight air.” 

Lady Constance sat down at the piano and 
began the nocturne. The beautiful hands flashed 
over the keys, whiter than the ivory on which they 
pressed, her face was grave with the joy of what 
she was doing. 

And as the duke listened the time and place 
faded utterly away. 

The passionate and yet fantastic music pealed 
out into the room and destroyed its material 
appeal to the senses. His brain seemed suddenly 
aware of a larger and more fully-coloured life than 
he had ever known before, ever thought pos- 
sible before. He stood upon the threshold of 
it; it held strange secrets, wonderful chances; 
there were passionate moments for young blood 
awaiting ! 

Here was the agony that lurked in pleasure, 
the immedicable pain which allured — lights 
gleamed behind swaying veils. 

Clang! 

The deep resonance of the iron bell tolled into 
the dream. 

Clang! 

The twin towers of Notre Dame were stark 
and black up in the sky. 

Clang! 

The dark sky grew rosy, he saw her hands, he 
saw the light upon her face. It was dark no 
longer — ^the bell had tolled away the old day. 


35 


A Most Surprising Day 

dawn was at hand, the new day was coming; the 
dawn of love was rosy in the sky. 

It was four o’clock when the duke’s guests went 
away. 

He went with them through the two quad- 
rangles of Paul’s to the massive gateway, and saw 
the three tall figures disappear in the mist with 
a sense of desolation and loss. 

But as he was returning to his rooms to get cap 
and gown in which to visit the dean of his college, 
he comforted himself with the reflection that 
term was almost over. 

In a week or so he would be in London, staying 
in the same house with her! The very thought 
set his heart beating like a drum ! 

He was nearly at the door of his staircase when 
he saw a man coming towards him, evidently 
about to speak to him. It was a man he recog- 
nised, though he had never spoken to him, a man 
called Burnside. 

St. Paul’s, as it has been said, was a college 
in which nearly all the undergraduates were rich 
men. A man of moderate means could not afford 
to join it. At the same time, as in the case of all 
colleges, there were half-a-dozen scholarships 
open to any one. As these scholarships were large 
in amount they naturally attracted very poor 
men. At the present moment there were some 
six or seven scholars of Paul’s, who lived almost 
entirely upon their scholarships and such tu- 


3 ^ 


The Socialist 


torial work as they could secure in the vacations. 
But these men lived a life absolutely apart from 
the other men of the college. They could afford 
to subscribe to none of the college clubs, they 
could not dress like other men, they could not 
entertain. That they were all certain to get 
first-classes and develop into distinguished men 
mattered nothing to the young aristocrats of the 
college. For them the scholars simply did not 
exist. 

Burnside, the duke had heard somewhere or 
other, was one of the most promising scholars 
of his year, but he wore rather shabby black 
clothes, very thick boots, and a made-up tie; he 
was quite an unimportant person! 

He came up to the duke now, his pale intelli- 
gent face flushing a little and a very obvious 
nervousness animating him. 

“Might I speak to you a moment?'* he 
said. 

The duke looked at him with that peculiar 
Oxford stare, which is possibly the most insolent 
expression known to the physiognomist, a culti- 
vated rudeness which the Oxford “blood" learns 
to discard very quickly indeed when he “goes 
down" and enters upon the realities of life. 

The duke did not mean an3rthing by his stare, 
however; it was habit, that was all, and seeing 
the nervousness of his vis-a-vis was growing 
painful, his face relaxed. “Oh, all right,” he 
said. “What is it — anything I can do? At any 


37 


A Most Surprising Day 

rate, come up to my rooms, it ’s so confoundedly 
dismal out here this afternoon.” 

The two men went up the stairs together and 
entered the huge luxurious sitting-room, with 
its brilliant lights, its glowing fire, its pictures 
and flowers. Burnside looked swiftly around 
him; he had never dreamed of such luxury, and 
then he began — 

'‘I hope you won’t think me impertinent,” he 
said, “but I have just received a telegram from 
the Daily Wire. I occasionally do some work 
for them. They tell me that part of your town 
house has been destroyed by an explosion, and 
that some famous art treasures have been de- 
stroyed.” 

“That ’s quite true, unfortunately,” said the 
duke. 

“And they ask me to obtain an interview with 
you for to-morrow’s paper in order that you may 
make some statement about your loss.” He 
spoke with an eagerness that almost outweighed, 
at any rate, alleviated his nervousness. 

“Most certainly not!” said the duke sharply. 
“I wonder that you should permit yourself to 
make me such a request. I will wish you good- 
afternoon!” 

The other muttered something that sounded 
like an apology and then turned to go. His face 
was quite changed. The eagerness passed out 
of it as though the whole expression had suddenly 
been wiped off by a sponge. An extraordinary 


38 


The Socialist 


dejection, piteous in the completeness of its disap- 
pointment, took its place. The duke had never 
seen anything so sudden and so profound before; 
it startled him. 

The man was already half-way to the door 
when the duke spoke again. 

“Excuse me,” he said, and from mere habit 
his voice was still cold, “would you mind telling 
me why you seem so strangely disappointed 
because I have not granted your request?” 

A surprise awaited him. Burnside swung 
round on his feet, and his voice was tense as he 
answered. 

“Oh, yes, I ’ll tell you,” he said, “though, 
indeed, how should you understand? The editor 
of the Daily Wire offered me fifteen pounds in his 
telegram if I could get a column interview with 
you. I am reading history for my degree, and 
there are certain German monographs which I 
can’t get a sight of in Oxford or London. The 
only way is to buy them. Of course, I could not 
afford to do that, and then suddenly this oppor- 
tunity came. But you can’t understand. Good- 
afternoon!” 

For the second time that day the duke was 
mildly surprised, but he understood. 

“My dear sir,” he said in a very different tone, 
“how was I to guess? I am very sorry, but I 
really am so — so ignorant of all these things. 
Come and sit down and interview me to your 
heart’s content. What does it matter, after all? 


39 


A Most Surprising Day 

Will you have a whisky and soda, or, perhaps, 
some tea? I ’ll call my scout.” 

In five minutes Burnside was making notes and 
asking questions with a swift and practical ability 
that compelled his host’s interest and admiration. 
The duke had never met any one of his own age 
so business-like and alert. His own friends and 
contemporaries were so utterly different. He 
became quite confidential, and found that he was 
really enjoying the conversation. 

After the interview was over the two young 
men remained talking frankly to each other for 
a few minutes, and, wide as the poles asunder in 
rank, birth, and fortune, they were mutually 
pleased. For both of them it was a new and 
stimulating experience, and the peer realised 
how narrow his views of Oxford must necessarily 
be. Suddenly a thought struck him. 

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I think I have 
something here that will interest you.” 

He went to his writing-table, and, after some 
search, found a letter. It was a long business 
document from his chief agent. Colonel Simpson. 

“I want to read you this paragraph from my 
agent’s last letter,” he said. 

“ ‘ . . . There is another matter to which I 
wish to draw your grace’s attention. As you 
are aware, the libraries, both at Fakenham and 
Paddington House, are of extreme value and 
interest, but since the death of the late librarian, 


40 


The Socialist 


Mr. Fox, no steps have been taken to fill his 
position. When he died Mr. Fox was half-way 
through the work of compiling a comprehensive 
and scholarly catalogue of your grace’s literary 
treasures. Would it not be as well to have this 
catalogue completed by a competent person in 
view of the fact that sooner or later your grace 
will be probably throwing open the two houses 
again?’ 

'‘Now, wouldn’t that suit you, Mr. Burnside, 
as work in the vacation, don’t you know? It 
would last a couple of years or so probably, and 
you need not give all your time to it, even if you 
take your degree meanwhile and read for the Bar, 
as you tell me you mean to. I would pay you, 
say, four hundred a year, if you think that is 
enough,” he added hastily, wondering if he ought 
to have offered more. 

The young man’s stammering gratitude soon 
undeceived him, and as Burnside left him his last 
words sent a glow of satisfaction through him- — 
“I won’t say any more than just this, your 
splendid offer has removed all obstacles from 
my path. The career I have mapped out for 
myself is now absolutely assured.” 

For half an hour longer the duke remained 
alone, thinking of the events of the day, thinking 
especially of Lady Constance Camborne. He 
did not give a thought to the smaller Gains- 
borough or the Florentine vase, and he was 


41 


A Most Surprising Day 

entirely ignorant that he had just done something 
which was to have a marked and definite in- 
fluence upon his future life. 

By six o’clock he had wired to Colonel Simpson, 
had obtained the necessary exeat from the dean, 
and was entering a first-class carriage in the fast 
train from Oxford to London. 

The fog was thick all along the line, and more 
than once the express was stopped for some 
minutes when the muffled report of fog signals, 
like guns fired under a blanket, could be heard 
in the dark. 

One such stop occurred when, judging by the 
time and such blurred indications of gaunt house- 
backs as he could discern, the duke felt that they 
must be just outside Paddington Station. 

He had the carriage to himself, brightly lit, 
warm, and comfortable. He sat there, wrapped 
in his heavy, sable-lined coat, a little drowsy and 
tired, though with a pleasant sense of well-being, 
despite the errand which was bringing him to 
London. 

The noise of the train died away and the en- 
gine stopped. Voices could be heard talking 
in the silence, voices which seemed very far 
away. 

Then there was the roar of an advancing train 
somewhere in the distance, a roar which grew 
louder and louder, one or two sudden shouts, 
and then a frightful crash as if a thunderbolt 
had burst, a shrill multiple cry of fear, and finally 


42 


The Socialist 


the long, rending noise of timber and iron breaking 
into splinters. 

The duke heard all this, and even as his brain 
realised what it meant, he was thrown violently 
up into the air — so it seemed to him — he caught 
sight of the light in the roof of the carriage for the 
thousandth part of a second, and then everything 
flashed away into darkness and silence. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE MAN WITH THE MUSTARD-COLOURED BEARD 

I T was the morning of the day on which part 
of the fagade of Paddington House, Picca- 
dilly, was destroyed by the explosion of a bomb. 

London was a city of darkness and gloom, a 
veritable “city of dreadful night.” 

The fog was everywhere, it was bitter cold, and 
all the lights in the shops and the lamps in the 
streets were lit. As yet the fog was some few 
yards above the house-tops. It had not de- 
scended, as it did later on in the day, into the 
actual streets themselves. It lay, a terrible leaden 
pall, a little above them. 

In no part of London did the fog seem more 
dreary than in Bloomsbury. The gaunt squares, 
the wide, old-fashioned streets, were like gashes 
cut into a face of despair. 

At half-past nine o’clock Mary Marriott came 
out of her tiny bedroom into her tiny sitting-room 
and lit the gas. She lived on the topmost floor 
of a great Georgian house in a narrow street just 
off Bedford Square. In the old days, before 
there were fogs, and when trees were still green 
in the heart of London, a great man had lived in 
this house. The neighbourhood was fashionable 

43 


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The Socialist 


then, and all the world had not moved westwards. 
The staircase at No. 102 was guarded by carved 
balusters, the ceilings of the lower rooms were 
worked in the ornate plaster of Adams, the doors 
were high, and the lintels delicately fluted. Now 
102 was let out in lodgings, some furnished, some 
unfurnished. Mary Marriott had two tiny rooms 
under the roof. On the little landing outside 
was a small gas-stove and some shelves, upon 
which were a few pots and pans. A curtain 
screened this off from the stairhead. This was 
the kitchen. The furniture, what there was of 
it, was Mary’s own, and, in short, she might, had 
she been so disposed, have called her dwelling 
almost a fiat. Moreover, she paid her rent quar- 
terly — five pounds every three months — and was 
quite an independent householder. 

Mary was an actress, a hard-working member 
of the rank and file. She had never yet secured 
even the smallest engagement in London, and 
most of her life was spent on tour in the provinces. 
When she was away she locked up her rooms. 

She was without any relations, except a sister, 
who was married to a curate in Birmingham. 
Her private income was exactly thirty pounds a 
year, the interest upon a thousand pounds safely 
invested. This paid the rent of the rooms which 
were all she had to call “home,” and left her ten 
pounds over. Every penny in addition to this 
she must earn by the exercise of her art. 

She had been lucky during her four years of 


Man with Mustard-Coloured Beard 45 


stage life in rarely being out of an engagement. 
She had never played a leading part, even in the 
provinces, but her second parts had generally 
been good. If she had come nowhere near suc- 
cess she had been able to keep herself and save 
a little, a very little, money for a rainy day. It 
is astonishing on how little two careful girls, 
chumming together, can live on tour. Managing 
in this way it was an extravagant week when 
Mary spent thirty shillings upon her share of the 
week’s bill, and as she never earned less than 
three pounds she felt herself fortunate. She 
knew piteous things of girls who were less for- 
tunate than she. 

She came into the room and lit the gas. It was 
not a beautiful room, some people would have 
called it a two-penny-halfpenny room, but it was 
comfortable, there was a gracious feminine touch 
about all its simple appointments, and to Mary 
Marriott it represented home. 

The chairs were of wicker-work, with cretonne 
cushions — sixteen-and-six each in the Tottenham 
Court Road. The pictures were chiefly photo- 
graphs of theatrical friends, the curtains were 
a cheap art-green rep, the carpet plain Indian 
matting — so easy to clean! But the colours 
were all harmonious, and a shelf holding nearly 
two hundred books gave a finishing note of 
pleasant habitableness. 

The girl moved with that grace which is not 
languid but alert. There was a spring and 


46 


The Socialist 


balance in her walk that made one think of a 
handsome boy; for though the lithe and beautiful 
figure was girlish enough, few girls learn to move 
from the hips, erect and unswayed, as she moved, 
or often suggest the temper and resilience of a 
foil. The simple grey tweed coat and the slim 
skirts that hung so superbly gave every movement 
its full value. 

She had not yet put on her hat, but her coat 
would keep her warm while she ate her frugal 
breakfast and save the necessity of lighting the 
fire, as she was shortly going out. 

Her hair was dead-black with the blackness of 
bog-oak root or of basalt. She did not wear it 
in any of the modes of the moment, but gathered 
up in a great coiled knot at the back of her head. 

In shape, Mary Marriott’s face was one of those 
semi-ovals which one has forgotten in the Greek 
rooms of the Louvre and remembered in some 
early Victorian miniatures. It was grave, and 
the comers of the almost perfect mouth were 
slightly depressed, like the Greek bow reversed. 

The violet eyes were not hard, but they did 
not seem quite happy. It was almost a petulance 
with environment which seemed written there, 
and, in the words of a great master of English 
prose, “the eyelids were a little weary.” All 
her face, indeed, — in the general impression it 
gave, — seemed to have that constant preoccupa- 
tion that hints at the pursuit of something not 
yet won. 


Man with Mustard-Coloured Beard 47 


She might have been four or five-and-twenty. 
Her face was not the face of a young, unknowing 
girl — no early morning fruit in a basket with its 
bloom untouched. Yet it was still possible to 
imagine that her indifferent loveliness could wake 
suddenly to all the caresses and surrenders of 
spring. But the ordained day must dawn for 
that. Like a sundial, one might have said of 
her that her message was told only under the 
serenest skies, and that even then it must come 
with shadow. 

She lit the stove on the landing to boil some 
water for her cocoa and egg. Then she took 
the necessary crockery from a cupboard, together 
with the loaf and butter she had bought last 
night. 

While the simple meal was in progress her low 
forehead was wrinkled with thought. A long 
tour was just over in the fairly prosperous reper- 
toire company with which she had been associated 
for eighteen months. Usually at this season of 
the year the company played right through till 
the spring at those provincial theatres where no 
pantomimes were produced. This year, however, 
it had been disbanded until March, when Mary 
was at liberty to rejoin if she had not meanwhile 
found another engagement. 

This was what she was trying to do, at present 
with no success at all. She was tired to death 
of the monotonous touring business. She felt 
that she had better work within her had she only 


48 


The Socialist 


a chance to show it. But it was horribly difficult 
to get that chance. She had no influence with 
London managers whatever. Her name was not 
known in any way, and as the days went by the 
hopelessness of her ambition seemed to become 
more and more apparent. 

This morning the heavy pall which lay over 
London seemed to crush her spirits. She was 
so alone, life was drab and cheerless. 

With a sigh she strove to banish black 
thoughts. “I won’t give up!” she said aloud, 
stamping a little foot upon the floor. “I know 
I ’ve got something in me, and I won’t give 
up!” 

When breakfast was over, she swept up the 
crumbs from the tablecloth, opened the window, 
and scattered them upon the leads for the birds — 
her invariable custom. Then she went into her 
bedroom, made the bed, and tidied everything, 
for she did all her own housework when she was 
“at home,” though a charwoman came once 
a week to “turn out” the rooms. 

When she had put on her hat and gloves and 
returned to the sitting-room she found two or 
three cheeky little London sparrows were chirp- 
ing over their meal on the parapet, and she stood 
motionless to watch them. As she did so she 
saw a new arrival. A robin, with bright, hungry 
eyes, in his warm scarlet waistcoat, had joined 
the feathered group. Nearly all the crumbs 
were disposed of by this time, and, greatly daring, 


Man with Mustard-Coloured Beard 49 


the little creature hopped on to the window-sill, 
looked timidly round him for a moment, and then 
flew right over to the table where the bread- 
platter still stood. With an odd little chirp of 
satisfaction the bird seized a morsel of bread 
as big as a nut in his tiny beak and flashed out 
through the window again, this time flying right 
away into the fog. 

“Oh, you dear! — you perfect dear!’’ Mary 
said, clapping her hands. “Why didn’t you 
stay longer?” And as she went down the several 
staircases to the hall the little incident remained 
with her and cheered her. “I shall have some 
luck to-day,” she thought. “I feel quite certain 
I shall have some luck. One of the agents will 
have heard of something that will suit me; I am 
confident of it.” And all the time that she 
walked briskly towards the theatrical quarter 
of London the sense of impending good fortune 
remained with her, despite the increasing gloom 
of the day. 

It was with almost a certainty of it that she 
turned into the district around Covent Garden 
and crossed the frontier as it were of the world 
of mimes. 

It is a well-defined country, this patch of stage- 
land in the middle of London. The man who 
knows could take a map of the metropolis and 
pencil off an area that would contain it with the 
precision of a gazetteer. Wellington Street on 
the east, St. Martin’s Lane on the west. Long 


50 


The Socialist 


Acre on the north, and the Strand on the south — 
these are its boundaries. 

Yet to the ordinary passer-by it is a terra incog- 
nita, its very existence is unsuspected, and he 
might hurry through the very centre of it without 
knowing that he was there at all. 

Mary made straight for Virgin Lane, a long, 
narrow street leading from Bedford Street to 
Covent Garden Market — the street where all the 
theatrical agents have their offices. The noise 
of traffic sank to a distant hum as she entered it. 
Instead, the broken sound of innumerable con- 
versations met her ear, for the pavements, and 
the road itself, were crowded with men and women 
who were standing about just as the jobbers and 
brokers do after closing time outside the Stock 
Exchange. 

The men were nearly all clean-shaven, and they 
were alike in a marked fashion. Dress varied and 
features differed, but every face bore a definite 
stamp and impress. Perhaps colour had some- 
thing to do with it. Nearly every face had the 
look of a somewhat faded chalk drawing. They 
shared a certain opaqueness of skin in common. 
What colour there was seemed streaky — ^the 
pastel drawing seemed at close quarters. There 
was an odd sketchiness about these faces, no one 
of them quite expressed what it hinted at. The 
men were a rather seedy-looking lot, but the 
women were mostly well dressed — some of them 
over-dressed. But they seemed to wear their 


Man with Mustard-Coloured Beard 51 


frocks as costumes, not as clothes, and to have 
that peculiar consciousness people have when 
they wear what we call “fancy dress.’’ 

Mary entered an open door with a brass-plate 
at the side, on which “Seaton’s Dramatic and 
Musical Agency” was inscribed. She walked up 
some uncarpeted stairs and entered two large 
rooms opening into each other. The walls were 
covered with theatrical portraits, and both rooms 
were already half-full of people, men and women. 
A clerk sat at a writing-table in the outer room 
taking the names of each person as he or she 
came, writing them down on slips of paper, and 
sending them into a third inner room, which was 
the private sanctum of Mr. Seaton, the agent 
himself. 

Mary sent in her name and sat down. Now 
and again some girl or man whom she knew would 
come in and do the same, generally coming up 
to her for a few words of conversation — for she 
was a popular girl. But most people’s eyes were 
resolutely fixed upon the door of the agent’s room, 
in the hope that he would appear and that a word 
might be obtained with him. Now and then this 
actually happened. Seaton, a tall man, with a 
cavalry moustache, would pop his head out, in- 
stead of sending his secretary, and call for this 
or that person. As often as not there was a 
hurried rush of all the others and a chorus of 
agitated appeals: “Just one moment, Mr. Seaton,” 
“I sha’n’t keep you a moment, dear boy,” “I ’ve 


52 The Socialist 

something of the utmost importance to tell 
you.’' 

And all the time the page-boy kept returning 
with the slips of paper upon which the actors 
and actresses had written their names upon 
entering, and finding out particular individuals. 
Some few were fortunate. “Mr. Seaton would 
like to see you at twelve, miss. He has something 
he thinks might suit you”; but by far the more 
usual formula was, “Mr. Seaton is very sorry, 
there is nothing suitable to-day; but would you 
mind calling again to-morrow.” 

At last it was Mary’s turn. She was talking 
to a Miss Dorothy French, a girl who had been 
with her on the recent tour, when the boy came 
up to her. “Mr. Seaton is very sorry that there 
is nothing suitable to-day, miss; but would you 
mind calling again to-morrow.” 

Mary sighed. “I ’ve been here for two hours,” 
she said, “and now there is nothing after all. 
And, somehow or other, I felt sure I should get 
something to-day.” 

She was continuing to bewail her lot when a 
very singular-looking man indeed entered the 
room and went up to the clerk. 

He was tall and dressed in loose, light tweeds, 
a flopping terra-cotta tie, a hat of soft felt, and 
a turn-down collar. His hair, beard, and mous- 
tache were a curious and unusual yellow — mustard 
colour, in fact. His eyes were coal black and very 
bright, while his face was as pale as linen. 


Man with Mustard-Coloured Beard 53 


Directly the clerk saw him he rose at once with 
a most deferential manner and almost ran to the 
agent’s private room. In a second more he was 
back and obseqtiiously conducting the man with 
the mustard-coloured beard into the sanctum. 

Mary and her friend left the office together and 
went out into the choking fog, which was now 
much lower and thicker. Both were members 
of the Actors Association, the club of ordinary 
members of their profession, and they planned 
to take their simple lunch there, read the Stage 
and the Era, and see if they could hear of anything 
going. 

As they went down the stairs Mary said, “You 
saw that odd-looking man with the yellow beard 
— evidently some one of importance? Well, do 
you know, Dolly, I can’t help thinking that I ’ve 
seen him before somewhere. I can’t remember 
where, but I ’m almost sure of it. ” 

The other girl started. 

“What a strange thing, dear,’ she said. “I 
had exactly the same sort of feeling, but I thought 
it must be a mistake. I wonder who he can 
be?” 

“He is a most unusual-looking person, though 
certainly distinguished — — Now I remember, 
Dolly!” 

“Where?” 

“Why, at Swindon, of course, on the last week 
of the tour, and, if I don’t forget, on the last night, 
too— the Saturday night. He was in evening 


54 


The Socialist 


things, in a box, with another man, a clergyman. 
He stayed for the first two acts, but when I came 
on in the third act he was gone!” 

“So it was! You ’re quite right. Now I re- 
member perfectly. What a curious coincidence!” 

They discussed the incident for the remainder 
of their short walk to St. Martin’s Lane, and then, 
lunch being imminent, and both of them very 
hungry, they forgot all about it. 

Miss French had an appointment after lunch 
and went away early, leaving Mary alone. There 
was nobody in the clubrooms that she knew, 
and she sat down by a glowing fire to read the 
afternoon papers, fresh editions of which had 
just been brought in. 

She read of the growing distress of the unem- 
ployed all over London. She saw that another 
Socialist had been elected to Parliament at a 
by-election — neither of which items of news in- 
terested her very much. Then she read with 
rather more interest, and a little shudder, that 
there had been a bomb explosion in Piccadilly 
only an hour or two ago, and that part of a great 
mansion belonging to the Duke of Paddington 
had been destroyed. 

At five o’clock she went out again. The fog 
was worse than ever, but she knew her London 
well and was not afraid. She did some modest 
shopping, and then let herself into the house with 
her latch-key and went up-stairs. 

Another day was over! 


Man with Mustard-Coloured Beard 55 


Another fruitless day was over, and the robin 
had not brought her luck after all! 

As she opened her own door and felt for the 
little enamelled matchbox which always stood 
on a shelf beside it, her foot trod on something 
which crackled faintly. 

Directly the gas was lit she saw that it was a 
telegram. 

She opened it. It had been despatched from the 
Bedford Street office at two o’clock that afternoon 
■ — while she had been at the Actors’ Association. 
It was from Seaton, the agent, and contained 
these words: 

“Gentleman calling personally on you six 
to-night with important offer.” 

In wild excitement Mary looked at the clock. 
It was ten minutes to six. She lit the fire hur- 
riedly, and urged it into flame with the bellows. 
Then she lit two candles on the mantlepiece to 
supplement the single gas jet, and drew the 
curtain over the window. 

At six o’clock precisely she heard rapid steps, 
light, springy steps, coming up the stairs. There 
was a momentary hesitation, and then came two 
loud, firm knocks at her door. She opened it 
almost immediately, and then started in uncon- 
trollable surprise. 

The man who stood before her was the tall man 
with the mustard-coloured beard and the face 
pale as linen. 


CHAPTER V 


TO INAUGURATE A REVOLUTION! 


T he strange-looking man bowed. 

'‘Miss Mary Marriott, I think!’' he said. 
“Yes,” Mary answered. “Please come in. I 
have had a telegram from Mr. Seaton, the agent.” 

“Yes, he sent me here,” said the tall man in a 
singularly fluid and musical voice. 

“I had better tell you my name.” He entered 
the room, closed the door, opened a silver cigarette 
case, and took a card from it which he handed 
to Mary. “There I am,” he said with a smile 
that showed a set of gleaming white teeth and 
lit up the pallid face into an extraordinary 
vivacity. 

Mary looked at the card. Then she knew 
who she was entertaining. On the card were 
these words: James Fabian Rose. The cus- 
tomary “Mr.” was omitted, and there was no 
address in the comer. 

Mary was a self-possessed girl enough, but she 
was unused to meeting famous people. She 
looked at the card, gave a little gasp, half of 
wonder and half of dismay, and then recollected 
herself. 

“Please do sit down, Mr. Rose,” she said, 
56 


“To Inaugurate a Revolution 1’' 57 


“and take off your overcoat' — oh, and smoke, 
please, if you want to — had no idea.” 

The tall man smiled. He seemed singularly 
pleased with the effect he had produced, almost 
childishly pleased. With a series of agile move- 
ments that had no break in them and seemed to 
be part of the continuous and automatic move- 
ment of a machine, he put his soft felt hat on 
the table, shed, rather than took off his overcoat, 
produced a box of wooden matches from some- 
where, lit a cigarette, and sat down by the fire. 
He rubbed his hands together and said, “Yes, 
it is I, what a nice fire you’ve got” — ^all in one 
breath and in his rich, musical voice. 

Mary sat down on the other side of the hearth, 
feeling rather as if she were in some fantastic 
dream. She said nothing, but looked at the man 
opposite, remembering all that she had heard of 
him. 

About five-and-forty years of age, James 
Fabian Rose was one of the most noteworthy 
personalities of the day. He filled an immense 
place in the public eye, and it was almost im- 
possible to open a newspaper without finding a 
paragraph or two about him on any given day. 
He was so well known that his whole name was 
seldom or never given in headlines. He was 
simply referred to as “J. F. R.” and every one 
knew at once who was referred to. 

His activities were enormous, and the three 
chief ones were Socialist leader, dramatist, and 


58 


The Socialist 


novelist. His socialistic lectures were always 
thronged by all classes of society. His problem 
plays — ^in which he always endeavoured to incul- 
cate one or another of his odd but fervent beliefs — 
were huge successes with cultured people. His 
novels were only read by literary people, and 
then merely for their cleverness. 

He was a man whom very few understood. 
He was, for one reason, far too clever to be credible 
with the popular mind; for, another, far too 
aware of his cleverness and far too fond of dis- 
playing it at inopportune moments. Fantastic 
paradox was his chief weapon, and many people 
did not realise his own point of view, which de- 
fined paradox as simply truth standing on its 
head to attract attention. 

When he referred to his own novels, which he 
often did, he always rated them high above 
Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Sir Walter 
Scott. When he spoke in public of his plays — 
no infrequent occurrence — ^it was generally with 
a word of pity for Shakespeare. He was the 
head of a large and enthusiastic following of 
intellectual people, and the anathema of all 
slow thinkers. Apropos of this last, he would 
quote Swift’s saying that the appearance of a 
man of genius in the world may always be known 
by the virulence of dunces. 

Beneath all his extravagances and pose — ^and 
their name was legion — ^his whole life and earnest- 
ness were devoted to the cause in which he be- 


‘‘To Inaugurate a Revolution !” 59 


lieved. One of the most unconventional, and, 
at the same time, one of the most prominent 
men of his day, he had two real passions. 

One was to shock the obese-brained of this 
world, the other to do all he could to leave the 
world better than he found it. 

This was the extraordinary person, genius and 
buffoon, reformer and wit, who sat laughing on 
one side of Mary Marriott’s little fire. 

“I ’ve surprised you, Miss Marriott!” said Mr. 
James Fabian Rose. 

“I saw you at the agent’s this morning,” she 
answered, and then — “I think I am not mistaken 
— I saw you at the theatre at Swindon a few 
weeks ago.” 

“Yes, I was there with Peter Conrad, the 
parson,” said Mr. Rose. “I ’d been addressing 
a meeting of the Great Western Railway Com- 
pany’s men in the afternoon — ^the younger men 
— trying to teach them that the youth of a nation 
are the trustees of posterity, and in the evening 
I came to the theatre. That ’s why I ’m here.” 

Mary said nothing. She waited for him to 
speak again, but her heart began to beat violently. 

“I took away the programme,” Rose went on, 
“and I put a mark against your name. I was 
quite delighted with your work, really delighted. 
I was in a fury at the crass stupidity of the play, 
and as for the rest of the company they bore 
about the same relation to real artists as the 
pawnbroker does to the banker. But you, my 


6o 


The Socialist 


dear child, were very good indeed. I kept you in 
mind for a certain project of mine which was then 
maturing. It is now settled, and this morning I 
called at one or two agents to find out where you 
were. You were not on Blackdale’s books, but I 
found you, or, rather, heard of you, at Seaton’s, 
and so here I am.” 

“You want me to ” 

“To act, of course. To become a leading lady 
in a West End theatre, in a new play. That ’s 
all!” 

For a moment or two Mary could not speak. 
“But such a thing never happened before,” 
she answered at length in a faltering voice. “It 
is ” 

He cut her short. “My experience of the stage 
is at least twenty times more profound than 
yours,” he said, “and I have known the thing 
happen six times within my own experience. 
Who found Dolores Rainforth? I did. Who 
found Beatrice Whittingham? — ^little wretch, she ’s 
deserted art and is making a squalid fortune in 
drawing-room comedy' — ^I did! I could give you 
many more names. However, that ’s neither 
here nor there. I want you for a certain purpose. 
I know that if I searched the provinces all over 
I should not find any one who so exactly fits the 
leading part — ^my own conception of it!' — in my 
new play as you do. Therefore you are coming 
to me. And the amusing part of it is that I have 
actually stormed the citadel of rank and fashion 


'' To Inaugurate a Revolution! ” 6i 


itself. I have gained a stronghold in the hostile 
country of the capitalists — in short, I and my 
friends have secured a lease of the Park Lane 
Theatre!” 

Mary leant back in her chair. Her face had 
suddenly grown white. She was overwhelmed by 
all this. And, though she forgot this, her lunch 
had consisted of a cheap and not very succulent 
luxury known as a “Vienna steak,” a not very 
nutritious mass of compressed mince-meat, but 
cheap, very cheap. It was now seven o’clock. 

There were those who said that James Fabian 
Rose was a dreamer. People who knew him 
intimately were aware that if he was an idealist, 
he was also practical in the ordinary affairs of 
life. 

“Now, I sha’n’t tell you a word more,” he said. 
“They ’re all waiting for you, and I promised to 
bring you for dinner. My wife was most in- 
sistent about it, and, besides, there are half a 
dozen people anxious to meet you. In absolute 
contradiction to all true socialistic principles I ’ve 
been paying rent for a cab which has been standing 
outside your front door for ever so long. Put 
on your hat and come at once.” 

Mary sat up. “But I can’t come like this,” 
she said helplessly, “to dinner!” 

Mr. Rose made a gesture of impatience. “The 
old stupid heresy of Carlyle,” he said, “compli- 
cated by the fact that if a woman looks nice in 
one sort of costume she can’t realise that she 


62 


The Socialist 


looks nice on whatever occasion she wears it. 
You must grow superior to such nonsense if we 
are to enlist you among us! But, come, you ’ll 
soon understand, and, besides, I know you are 
not really the ordinary fluffy little duffer one 
meets in the stage world.” 

She fell in with his humour and quickly pinned 
on her hat. She knew that she was on the 
threshold of stimulating experiences, that her 
chance had come, no matter how strange and 
fantastic the herald of its advent. 

As Rose had said, a hansom was waiting. They 
got into it and trotted slowly away into the fog 
towards the great man’s house at Westminster. 

They arrived at last, though it was a somewhat 
perilous journey. More than once the driver 
descended from his seat, took one of the lamps 
from its bracket, and led his horse through this 
or that misty welter of traffic. Parliament Street 
was a broad hurry of confusion, but when they 
had passed the Abbey on the right and turned 
into the small network of quiet streets behind the 
Norman tomb of ancient kings, the house of 
the Socialist in Great College Street- — ^that quiet 
and memorable backwater of London- — ^was easily 
found. 

Rose opened a big green door with his latch-key, 
and at once a genial yellow glow poured out and 
painted itself upon the curtain of the fog. Mary 
stood on the steps as a young woman of middle 
height, pretty and vivacious, came hurrying to 


“ To Inaugurate a Revolution !” 63 

the door. “My dear girl!” she cried, “so here 
you are! Fabian swore that he would find you 
and bring you. Come in quick out of the cold.” 

Then she stopped, still holding the door open — 
something was going on outside, the not infre- 
quent altercation with the London cabman, Mary 
thought. 

This is what she heard. “Don’t be so foolish, 
my friend” — it was Rose’s voice. 

“Foolish!” said the cabman. “Bit of oil right 
ter call me foolish, I don’t fink! Nah, I don’t 
tyke no money from you, J. F. R., stryke me 
Turnham Green, if I do! I ’ve ’eard you speak, 
I read your harticles, hi do, and it ’s a fair ex- 
chynge. In the dyes ter come no one won’t pye 
anyfink for anyfink. The Styte ’ll do it all. I ’ve 
your word for it. I ’m a practical Socialist, I 
am. So long, and keep ’ammering awye at them 
as keeps the land from the rightful howners, 
wich is heverybody.” 

He cracked his whip and disappeared into the 

fog. 

Mr. Rose came into the hall, shut the door, 
and looked at the half sovereign in his hand with 
a sigh. His manner seemed a little subdued. 

“A little in advance of the future,” he said in 
a meditative voice; “dear, good fellow! And 
now, Lucia, take Miss Marriott upstairs.” 

When her hostess took her into the drawing- 
room Mary found several people there. All of 
them seemed to expect her, she had the sense of 


64 


The Socialist 


that at once. Her welcome was singularly cor- 
dial, she was in some subtle way made to feel 
that she was somebody. She did not quite 
realise this at the moment because the whole 
thing was too sudden and exciting. She per- 
ceived it afterwards when she thought everything 
over. 

The drawing-room on the first floor was large, 
low-ceilinged, and singularly beautiful. Mary 
had never seen such a room before. She had a 
sort of idea that Socialists liked to live in places 
like the hall of a workhouse, or the class-room of 
a board school — drab and whitewash places. She 
did not know till some time afterwards that the 
room she was in had been arranged and designed 
for the Roses by William Morris and Walter Crane 
themselves. 

It was, in truth, a lovely room. 

The walls were covered with brown paper for 
two-thirds of their height. A wooden beading 
painted white divided the warm and sober brown 
from a plain white frieze. All along one side of 
the room were shelves covered with gleaming 
pewter- — an unusually fine collection. Here was 
a seventeenth-century b6nitier from Flanders, 
there a set of “Tappit hens,’' found in a Scotch 
ale-house. There was a gleaming row of massive 
English plates of the Caroline period stamped 
with the crowned rose. The dull gleam, set 
thus against the brown background, was curiously 
effective, and the old Davenport and Mason china 


“ To Inaugurate a Revolution ! ” 65 


upon the white frieze above — deep blues, golds, 
and old cardinal reds, — ^the drawings by Walter 
Crane upon the walls, the tawny orange and reds 
of the Teheran carpets, and the open brick fire- 
place, all blended and refined themselves into a 
delightful harmony. 

Besides the host and hostess three other people 
were present. 

One of them was the Reverend Peter Conrad, 
the clergyman who had been with Rose in the 
box at the Swindon Theatre. Mary recognised 
him at once. 

He was tall and thin with a clear-cut and some- 
what ascetic face and a singularly humorous 
mouth. She had heard vaguely of him as a leader 
among that branch of the party which called 
itself, “Christian Socialistic,” a large and growing 
group of earnest people, of all sects and shades 
of Christian opinion, representing every school 
of thought, but which, nevertheless, united in 
the endeavour to adapt the literal Socialistic 
teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to modern 
life. Christ, they said, was the Master Socialist, 
and all their aspirations and teachings were 
founded upon this axiom. 

Sitting next to Mr. Conrad was a small, pale- 
faced man with a rather heavy light moustache 
and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He would 
have been almost insignificant in appearance 
had it not been for the high-domed forehead and 
fine cranial development. This was Charles 


5 


66 


The Socialist 


Goodrick, the editor-in-chief of the great Radical 
daily paper — ^the most “advanced” of all the 
London journals, — ^and a man with great political 
influence. 

The third man, Aubrey Flood, Mary recog- 
nised at once. He was a young and enthusiastic 
actor-manager, possessed of large private means, 
who was in the forefront of the modern movement 
for the reformation of the stage. He was at the 
head of the band of enthusiasts who were sworn 
foes of musical comedy and futile melodrama, 
and he enjoyed a definite place and cachet in 
society. 

When they all went in to dinner, which they 
did almost at once, Mary found that he was 
seated at her left. On her right was Mr. Rose 
himself. 

The meal was quite simple, but exquisitely 
served and cooked. The consommd would not 
have disgraced Vatel or Car^me, the omelette 
was light as a feather, and, above all, hot! The 
wild ducks had been properly basted with port 
wine and stuffed with minced chestnuts and ham. 
To poor Mary it was a banquet for the gods I 

“You see. Miss Marriott,” said Rose, with a 
queer little twinkle in his eye, “we don’t eat out 
of a common trough, though we are Socialists, 
nor are we vegetarians, as poor, dear Bernard 
Shaw would like us all to be.” 

Mary laughed. “I don’t think I ever imagined 
Socialists were like that,” she said. “In fact. 


‘‘ To Inaugurate a Revolution ! ” 67 


though it may seem very terrible, I must confess 
that my mind has hitherto been quite a blank 
upon the subject.” 

“Then it will be all the easier to write the truth 
upon it,” Rose answered. 

“Then Miss Marriott does n’t quite know what 
we want her for yet?” Aubrey Flood asked. 

“She only knows that she is going to play 
lead at the Park Lane Theatre in a new play of 
mine. ” 

“And that is overwhelming, simply,” Mary 
said with a blush. “It ’s impossible to believe. 
But, all the same, I am longing to. hear all there 
is for me to know. ” 

“So you shall after dinner,” said Rose, “you 
shall have full details. Meanwhile, to sum the 
whole thing up, you are not only going to take 
a part in a play, but you are going to inaugurate 
a Revolution!” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE GREAT NEW PLAN 

“ f F. R. ” had spoken with unusual seriousness, 
J • and his manner was reflected in the faces 
of the other guests as they looked towards Mary 
Marriott. 

The girl’s brain reeled at the words. A Revolu- 
tion! What could they mean — ^what did it all 
mean? Was she not in truth asleep in her dingy 
little attic sitting-room? Wouldn’t she wake 
up soon to find the old familiar things around her 
— ^all these new surroundings but a dream, a 
phantom of the imagination? 

Mrs. Rose was watching her, and guessed some- 
thing of what was passing in the girl’s mind. 
“My dear,” she said, with a bright and friendly 
smile, “it ’s all right; you really are wide awake, 
and you shall hear all about it from Fabian in a 
few minutes. And you have n’t come into a den 
of anarchists, so don’t be afraid. Only your 
chance has come at last, and you are to have 
the opportunity of doing a great, artistic thing 
— as great, perhaps, as any actress has ever done 
■ — and also of helping England. You may make 
history! Who knows?” 

“Who knows, indeed?” said Charles Goodrich, 
68 


The Great New Plan 


69 


the editor of the Daily Wire. “I hope it will be 
my privilege to record it in the columns of 
my paper.” 

The dinner was nearly over, but the remainder 
of it seemed interminably long to the waiting 
girl. In a swift moment, as it were, her whole 
life was changed. That morning she was a poor 
and almost friendless actress of the rank and file. 
Now she sat at dinner with a group of influential 
people whose names were known far and wide, 
whose influence was a real force in public affairs. 
And, somehow or other, they wanted her. She 
was an honoured guest. She was made to feel, 
and in a half-frightened way she did feel, that 
much depended upon her. What it was she did 
not know and could not guess; but the fact re- 
mained, and the consciousness of it was a strange 
mingling of exaltation, wonder, and fear. 

At last Mrs. Rose smiled and nodded at Mary 
and rose from her seat. 

“Don’t be more than five minutes, Fabian,” 
the hostess said, as she and Mary left the room. 

When they were alone together she drew the 
girl to a big couch, covered with blue linen, and 
kissed her. 

“We are to be friends,” she said, “I am quite 
certain of it.” And the lonely girl’s heart went 
out to this winning and gracious young matron. 

The four men came into the room, a maid 
brought coffee, cigarettes were lighted — Mrs. Rose 
smoked, but Mary did not — and the playwright 


70 


The Socialist 


took up a commanding position upon the hearth- 
rug. 

Then he began. The mockery which was so 
frequent a feature of his talk was gone. He per- 
mitted himself neither pose nor paradox — ^he was 
in deadly earnest. 

“For more than a year,” he said, “I have 
searched in vain for an actress who could fill the 
chief woman’s part in my new play. None of 
the ladies who have acted in my other plays 
would do. They were admirable in those plays, 
but this is quite different. I have never written 
anything like it before. I sincerely believe, and 
so do those who are associated with me in its 
production” — he looked over at Aubrey Flood- — 
“that the play is a great work of art. But it is 
designed to be more, far more than that. It is 
designed to be a lever, a huge force in helping on 
the cause in which I believe and to which I have 
devoted my life — ^the cause of Socialism. I could 
not find any one capable of playing Helena Hardy, 
the heroine of the play. The play stands alone; 
yet is like no other play ; no actress trained in the 
usual way, and however clever an artist, had the 
right personality. Then I saw you play. I knew 
at once. Miss Marriott, that I had found the lady 
for whom I was searching. Chance or Fate had 
thrown you in my way. In every detail you 
visualized my Helena Hardy for me. I am never 
mistaken. I was, and am, quite certain of it. 

“You tell me you know nothing of Socialism. 


The Great New Plan 


71 


Before you have been associated with us very 
long you will know a great deal about it. I am 
sure, if I read you rightly, that when the time 
comes for you to play Helena you will be con- 
vinced of the truth of the words you utter, of 
the Cause for the service of which we enlist your 
art. It is the cause of humanity, of brotherhood, 
of freedom. 

“We cannot go on as we are. These things 
have not touched your young life as yet, they 
are about to do so. Realise, to begin with, that 
England cannot continue as she is at present. 
Nemesis is one of the grim realities not sufficiently 
taken into account in the great game of life. 
Leaden-footed she may be, and often is, but that 
is only her merciful way of giving the sinner time 
to repent. There is nothing more certain in the 
universe than that an injustice done to an in- 
dividual or to a class, to a nation or to a sex, will 
sooner or later bring destruction upon the doer. 
At the present moment England is reproducing 
every cause which led to the downfall of the great 
nations of the past — ^Imperialism, taking tribute 
from conquered races, the accumulation of great 
fortunes, the development of a huge population 
which owns no property and is always in poverty. 
Land has gone out of cultivation, and physical 
deterioration is an alarming fact. And so we 
Socialists say that the system which is producing 
these results must not be allowed to continue. 
A system which has robbed Religion of its mes- 


72 


The Socialist 


sage, destroyed handicraft, which awards the 
prizes and successes of life to the unscrupulous, 
corrupts the press, turns pure women into the 
streets and upright men into mean-spirited 
time-servers, must not continue. 

“I’m not going to give you a lecture on So- 
cialism now. But it is absolutely necessary that 
I should explain to you, at the very beginning 
of your work, how we look at these things. 

“At the present moment three quarters at 
least of the whole population are called ‘workers. ’ 
How do these people live? By the wear of hands 
and bodies, by the sweat of their faces. A 
‘worker’ eats food which is rough, cheap, and 
harmful in many instances. His clothes are of 
shoddy, with a tendency to raggedness. He 
lodges in tiny, ill- ventilated rooms. He works 
from eight to sixteen hours each day, just so long 
as his strength is effective. And not only the 
worker himself — ^that is the man who is head and 
support of his family — ^but his wife and sisters and 
daughters share the burden of toil. He works 
among perils and dangers unceasing, accidents 
with machinery, explosions in mills and mines, 
dieadful diseases come to him from danger- 
ous trades — unwholesome conditions, vitiated 
air, poisonous processes, and improper housing. 
Hardly any of those fortunate ones who impose 
these tasks upon him take any care to shield him 
from these evils. He is not so valuable as a horse. 
He is cheap, there are millions of him to be had. 


The Great New Plan 


73 


why go to the expense of protecting him? A 
horse has to be bought, he costs an initial sum 
down, the worker costs nothing but his wretched 
keep. 

“You, Miss Marriott, are cultured. You are an 
artist, you live for your art, and you care for it. 
You can understand the peculiar horror, I should 
say one peculiar horror, of the life of the worker 
which he is himself generally too blind and ig- 
norant to understand. For he has no leisure to 
look about him, no heart to speculate as to what 
things might be. Over all his misery and mis- 
fortune towers one supreme misery and mis- 
fortune — ^the want of all that makes the pleasure 
and interest of life to the free man. No genius 
tells stories, makes music, paints pictures, writes 
or acts, plays, builds palaces for the worker. 
Genius itself would starve at such work, as things 
are at present constituted. The workers’ chief 
concern is to buy bread. He must let art, that 
sweetens life, go by. The Graces and the Muses 
are never shown to him in such a way that he may 
know and love them for their own sakes. ” 

He stopped suddenly. Colour had come into 
the pallid face, the rich, musical voice had a 
vibrant organ note in it, every one in the room 
was leaning forward, strained to attention, Mary 
among the rest. 

“So much for that,” he went on. “I have 
been saying necessary but obvious things. Now 
let me point out what we are doing, we Socialists. 


74 


The Socialist 


Our party is growing enormously day by day. 
Innumerable adherents, great power, fill our 
ranks and give us weapons. 

“We have an influential press. Monthly re- 
views and weekly papers preach our message. 
And one great daily journal, controlled by our 
brother, Charles Goodrich, reaches every class 
of society, and hammers in the truth day by day. 

“Our political organization is an engine of 
great power. We have a large pledged party in 
the House of Commons. Our lecturers are every- 
where, our books and pamphlets are being sown 
broadcast over the kingdom. 

“We have a great Religious movement. Mr. 
Conrad here, together with some half a dozen 
others, controls the increasing band of Christian 
Socialists. Men and women of all the churches 
flock to his banner, differences of opinion are for- 
gotten and lost under the one comprehensive 
watchword — ^that Christianity, the faith in Jesus 
Christ, is a socialistic religion. 

“We have two great needs, however. Able as 
our writers are, they are nearly all essayists or 
journalists. As yet no great popular novelist has 
joined us- — one of those supreme preachers who 
wield the magic wand of fiction and reach where 
no others can reach. 

“And lastly, we have never had as yet a so- 
cialistic stage! That tremendous weapon, the 
theatre, has laid ready to our hand, but we have 
not availed ourselves of it. We are about to do 


The Great New Plan 


75 


SO now. You know, I know, we are both experts, 
and it is our business to know, that there are 
hundreds of thousands of people who never read 
a book or pamphlet, and who are yet profoundly 
influenced and impressed by the mimic represen- 
tations of life which they see upon the .stage. 

“You are a provincial actress. You have 
toured in ordinary melodrama. When, after 
some important act or scene, the characters are 
called before the curtain, what do you find? 
You find that some stick of a girl who has walked 
through the part of the heroine in a simper and a 
yellow wig is rapturously applauded- — not for 
herself, the public thinks nothing of her acting 
one way or the other, but for the virtues of which 
she is the silly and inartistic symbol. The bad 
woman of the piece, always and invariably the 
finer player and more experienced artist, is hissed 
with genuine virulence. 

“What is this but the very strongest proof — 
and there are dozens of other proofs if such were 
wanting — of the influence, the real and deep 
influence of the theatre upon the ordinary man 
and woman? 

“It is to inaugurate the new use to which the 
theatre is going to be put by us that I have in- 
vited you to join us. But do not mistake me. 
We have taken the Park Lane Theatre by design. 
We are going to begin by showing the idle classes 
themselves the truth about themselves and their 
poorer brethren. They will come out of curiosity 


76 


The Socialist 


in the first instance, and afterwards because 
what we are going to give them is so unique, so 
extraordinary, and so artistically fine that they 
will be absolutely unable to neglect it. Then 
the movement will spread. We shall rouse the 
workers by this play, and others like it, in theatres 
which they can afford to attend. We shall have 
companies on tour — I may tell you that already 
a vast and detailed scheme is prepared, though 
I need not go into any of the details of that on 
this first night. 

“And now, finally, let me tell you, quite briefly 
and without going into the scope of the plot, 
something about the first play of all at the Park 
Lane Theatre — your play, the play in which you 
are to create Helena Hardy. It is called, at 
present. The Socialist, and it is destined to be the 
first of a series. Its primary effort, in the care- 
fully-thought-out scheme of theatre propaganda, 
is to draw a lurid picture of the extreme and 
awful contrast between the lives of the poor and 
the rich. 

“We are going to do what has never been 
really done before — we are going to be extra- 
ordinarily and mercilessly realistic. It will be 
called brutal. And our studies are going to be 
made at first hand. In attacking one class, we 
are also going to allow it to be known that all our 
actual scenes have been taken from life. The 
slums to the north of Oxford Street, all round 
Paddington, are hideous and dreadful. They 


The Great New Plan 


77 


all belong to one man, the young Duke of Pad- 
dington, a boy at Oxford; incredibly rich. The 
theatre itself is on his land. Well, we are going 
to go for this young man tooth and nail, hammer 
and tongs, because he is typical of the class we 
wish to destroy. We are going to let it be gen- 
erally known that this is our object. It will be 
published abroad that the slum scenes in the play 
are literal reproductions of actual scenes on the 
duke’s property. Our scene painters are even 
now at work taking notes. One by one all the 
members of the caste are going to be taken to see 
these actual slums, to converse with their in- 
habitants, to imbibe the frightful atmosphere 
of these modern infernos. We want every one 
to play with absolute conviction. I have ar- 
ranged that a party shall leave this house in two 
days’ time, a county council inspector and a couple 
of police inspectors are coming with us, in order 
to do this. You, I beg. Miss Marriott, will come, 
too. ” 

He had been speaking for a considerable time 
with enormous earnestness and vivacity. Now 
he stopped suddenly and sank into a chair. His 
face became pale again, he was manifestly 
tired. 

Some one passed him a box of cigarettes. He 
lit one, inhaled the smoke in a few deep breaths, 
and then turned to Mary. 

“Well?” he said. 

She answered him as simply, and many words 


78 The Socialist 

would not have made her answer more satisfying 
or sincere. 

“Yes/' she said. 

“Very well, then, that's settled,’' Rose replied 
in his ordinary voice. “Salary and that sort 
of thing we will arrange to-morrow through Mr. 
Seaton. I will merely assure you that we regard 
the labourer as worthy of his hire, and that we 
shall not disagree upon that sort of thing. " 

As he spoke a maid entered the room. “Mr. 
Goodrich is being rung up from the offices of the 
Daily Wire, ” she said. 

“Then there is something important," said 
the journalist, as he hurried to the telephone in 
an adjacent room. “When I left at five I said 
that I should not return to-night unless it was 
an3rthing big. I left Bennett in sole charge." 

He was away some minutes, and the con- 
versation in the drawing-room became general, 
the high note being dropped by mutual consent. 

“By the way," Mr. Conrad said suddenly, 
“what an odd thing it is that part of Paddington 
House was blown down this morning!" 

“The poor boy will have to take arms against 
a sea of troubles, " said Mrs. Rose sympathetically. 
“At any rate, we are law-abiding conspirators. 
It seems dreadful to think that there are people 
who will go these lengths. I 'm sorry for the poor 
young duke. It is n’t his fault that he ’s who 
and what he is. " 

“Of course," Rose replied. “I hate and 


The Great New Plan 


79 


deprecate this violence. It is, of course, a 
menace from the unemployed. But my heart 
bleeds for them. Think of them crouching in 
doorways, with no shirts below their ragged 
coats, with no food in their stomachs, on a night 
like this!'’ 

He shuddered, and Mary saw, with surprise, 
another and almost neurotic facet of this extra- 
ordinary character. 

Charles Goodrich hurried into the room. “I 
must say good-night,” he said, in a voice which 
trembled with excitement. “A very big piece 
of news has come in. One of our men has all the 
details. It will be our particular scoop. No 
other paper to-morrow morning will have all that 
we shall. ” 

“But what is it?” Rose asked. 

“A big railway accident, but with an extra- 
ordinary complication, and — by Jove, what a 
coincidence! — it concerns the young Duke of 
Paddington!” 

“Is he killed?” 

“No. He was stunned for a time. The accident 
happened in the fog just outside Paddington 
Station. He was stunned, but soon recovered. 

“Then what?” said the journalist. 

“Why, the extraordinary thing is that he has 
totally disappeared!” 


CHAPTER VII 


KIDNAPPING UPON SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES 

HE Duke of Paddington lay stunned and 



1 unconscious beneath the wreck of the 
first-class carriage. 

There had been the period of waiting outside 
Paddington Station — his own great-grandfather 
had sold the ground on which it stood to the 
company — in the black fog of the winter’s night. 

Then there had come the lengthening roar of 
the approaching train, the shouts, the horrid 
crash of impact, the long tearing, ripping, grind- 
ing noise — and oblivion. 

How long he had been unconscious the duke 
did not in the least know. He came back to life 
with that curious growing, widening sensation 
that a diver has when he is once more springing 
up through the water towards the surface, air, and 
light. 

Then quite suddenly full consciousness returned 
— rather, he arrived at full consciousness. Every- 
thing was dark, pitch dark. His ears were full 
of a horrid clamour. A heavy, suffocating weight 
was pressing upon him. 

He lay perfectly still for some moments en- 
deavouring to recollect where he was and what 


8o 


Scientific Kidnapping 8i 

had happened. Finally he remembered and 
realised that he was actually — ^he himself- — a 
victim of one of those terrible railway accidents 
of which he had read so often in the newspapers 
with a careless word of pity, or perhaps, no 
emotion at all. 

Another train had crashed into the Oxford 
express in the fog. 

The duke moved his right arm, and found he 
could do so freely, except above his body, where 
the heavy something which was lying upon him 
prevented its passage. He strove to dislodge the 
weight, but was utterly unable to do so. He 
was, in fact, pinned beneath a mass of woodwork, 
which, while not pressing on him with more than 
a little of its weight, nevertheless kept him rigid 
upon his back without possibility of movement. 
His left arm he could not move at all. Curiously 
enough, the sensation of fear was entirely absent. 

“I am in a deuce of a tight place, ” he thought 
of himself, and thought about himself in a 
strangely detached fashion as if he was thinking 
of another person. 

“I am in a deuce of a tight place. What is 
to be done?” 

He tried once more to move the crushing roof. 
He might as well have tried to push down the 
Bank of England with an umbrella. 

Next there came to him a sudden thought, a 
realisation that at least one thing was in his 
favour. As far as he knew he was perfectl un- 


6 


82 


The Socialist 


hurt. He felt fairly certain that no limbs were 
broken, and that he had no severe internal in- 
jury. He was cut and bruised, doubtless, and 
still giddy from the blow of the impact, but, 
save for this, there could be no doubt that he had 
been most mercifully preserved. 

The air was full of confused noises, shouts, the 
roaring of escaped steam, cries of agony. The 
duke added his clamour to the rest. His voice 
was full and strong, and echoed and re-echoed 
in his ears. 

Nothing happened, and now for the first time 
a sickening feeling of fear came to him and his 
cries sank into silence. 

Almost immediately afterwards he heard a 
noise much nearer than before, much more dis- 
tinct and individual. It was a crashing, regular 
noise, some one was working at the debris. 

Once more he shouted, and this time an an- 
swering hail came to him. 

“Is anyone there?’' 

“Yes,” the duke called out. “I am pinned 
down here by a heavy mass of timber. ” 

“Are you badly injured?” 

“I don’t think I ’m much hurt, only it is im- 
possible for me to move. ” 

“Cheer up!” came back the voice. “We will 
soon have you out.” And then the crashing, 
tearing noise went on with renewed vigour. 

In a few minutes the duke found the pressure 
on his chest was much relieved and the noise grew 


Scientific Kidnapping 83 

infinitely louder. It was as though he was lying 
shut up in a box, at the sides of which half a 
dozen stalwart navvies were kicking. He thought 
that the drums of his ears were bursting. Then 
there was a chorus of shouts, a last tremble and 
heaving of the confining mass, a breath of cold 
reviving air, and strong hands withdrew him 
from his prison. 

He was carried swiftly to the side of the line 
and laid down upon a pile of sacking. Imme- 
diately he became aware that soft, dexterous 
hands were feeling him all over, hands which 
seemed to be definite and separate organisms, 
so light and purposeful were they. 

He realised that a doctor was examining him, 
and the light of a lantern which some one else 
was holding showed him that the surmise was 
correct. A tall young man with a pointed 
beard, in a long mackintosh, was bending over 
him. 

“You are all right, thank goodness!” said the 
doctor. “You are not hurt a bit, only you have 
been stunned, and of course you are suffering 
from the shock. Now, you just lie here until I 
come to you again. You must stay still for half 
an hour. Drink this. ” 

He held a little cup of brandy to the duke’s 
mouth. The fiery liquid sent new life into the 
young man’s veins. Everything became more 
real and actual to him. Before everything had 
been a little blurred, as the first image upon the 


84 


The Socialist 


lenses of field-glasses is blurred. Now, the duke 
seemed to have got the right focus. 

“Now, mind, you are not to move at all till I 
come back,” the doctor said. “You have got 
a warm coat, and I will put some of these sacks 
over you. You are not hurt, but if you move 
now until you are rested a little you may get a 
shock to the nerves, which will remain with you 
for a long time. Now I must go to attend to 
some of the poor chaps who want me far more 
than you do. ” 

“Is it a bad smash?” the duke asked. They 
were the first words he had spoken. 

“One of the worst smashes for many years,” 
answered the doctor over his shoulder as he was 
hurrying away. “You may thank your Maker 
that you have been so mercifully preserved.” 

The duke lay where he was. 

The brandy had revived him, and, to his sur- 
prise, he realised that, except for a more or less 
violent headache, he really felt as well as he had 
been when he first got into the train. He was 
not even aware of any bruises or contusions, 
save only that his left hand had been rather 
badly cut, and was covered with congealed 
blood. 

He wondered exactly where he was, and he 
looked around him. The fog was still impene- 
trably dense, though it was illuminated here and 
there by glowing fires and moving torches - — a 
strange Dantesque vision of moving forms and 


Scientific Kidnapping 85 

red light, dim and distorted, like some mys- 
terious tragedy of the underworld. 

Now and then some sharp and almost animal 
like cry of agony came to his ears, cutting through 
the gloom like a knife, horribly distressing to 
hear. 

Nobody was immediately near him. He was 
outside the radius of the chief activities of the 
breakdown gang and the doctors. There was 
nothing for him to do but to wait where he was. 
The doctor would be certain not to forget him, 
and, besides, he had not the faintest notion in 
what direction to move in order to get away from 
all this horror. 

So he lay still. 

Presently the brandy, to which he was unac- 
customed, began to work within him, and induced 
a langour and drowsiness. His heavy sable coat, 
all torn and soiled now, though it had cost him 
six hundred guineas less than a month before, 
kept his body warm, and, in addition to it, he 
was covered by sacking. 

His mind wandered a little, and he was almost 
on the point of dropping to sleep when there was 
a sound as of approaching footsteps upon gravel 
or cinders. He heard a muttered and strangely 
husky conversation, apparently between two peo- 
ple, a quick, furtive ripple of talk, and then 
something descended upon his mouth, something 
warm and firm — a man’s hand. 

In the dark he could see two figures about him. 


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A man had stooped down and brought his hand 
silently down upon his mouth, so that he could 
not cry out. Another was bending towards him 
on the other side, and soon he felt that deft hands 
were going through his pockets. When the 
doctor had touched him he had felt nothing but 
surprise and wonder at the prehensile intelligence 
of the touch. Now he shuddered. 

He began to struggle, but found himself by 
no means so strong as he had imagined that he 
was a quarter of an hour ago. 

A harsh voice hissed in his ear: “Now, stow 
that, or I ’ll make you!” 

In all his life the Duke of Paddington had never 
been spoken to in such a way, and, ill as he was, 
the imperious blood leapt to his brain, and he 
redoubled his exertions. 

Suddenly he stopped with a low gurgle of 
anguish. 

His ear had been seized between two bony 
knuckles and twisted round with a sharp jerk 
until the pain was frightful. 

Then he lay still once more. 

He realised what was happening. The acci- 
dent to the train had occurred on that part of 
the line some little way out of the station, upon 
which all sorts of more or less slum houses debouch. 
Two of those modern brigands who infest London 
had come, attracted to this scene of suffering and 
tragedy by the hope of plunder' — even as in the 
old days, after a battlefield, obscene and terrible 


Scientific Kidnapping 87 

creatures appeared in the night and nameless 
deeds were done. 

They had his watch. Sir John Bennett had 
made it specially for him. It was one of those 
repeating watches with all sorts of costly ad- 
ditional improvements, which can do almost any- 
thing but talk. 

He heard the man about him say: “This ’ere ’s 
a rich bloke, Sidney ; but the ticker ’s no blooming 
use except for the case. The — fence would n’t 
look at it. Too easy to identify. Ah, this ’ere ’s 
better!” 

He had found the duke ’s sovereign purse. 

Swiftly, and with the skill born of long prac- 
tice, the man went through every pocket. When 
he found the little case of green crocodile skin, 
in which the duke carried paper money, his cards, 
and a letter or two, he gave a low whistle of delight. 

The duke could hear the little crackle close to 
his ear as the man counted the five-pound notes. 

Almost immediately after this there was a gasp 
of astonishment. 

“Look ’ere!” the other man said, “it’s the 
bloomin’ Duke of Paddington himself!” 

The duke started, and obviously his captors 
imagined that he was about to recommence his 
struggles, for there was a sharp tweak of his ear 
once more. After that he heard nothing. 

The two men had joined heads over his body 
and were whispering eagerly to each other. It 
seemed an eternity while he was lying there with 


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the heavy hand upon his mouth, breathing with 
difficulty through his nostrils, though, in actual 
point of fact, from first to last, the whole thing 
was of less than two minutes’ duration. 

The men seemed to have come to some sort 
of agreement. 

They acted with neatness and precision. A 
filthy and evil-smelling handkerchief was sud- 
denly rammed into the duke’s mouth. Another 
bandaged his eyes before he realised what was 
happening, and two pair of stalwart arms had him 
up upon his feet, locked in the London policeman’s 
grip, and half carried, half hustled right away 
from where he had been lying almost before he 
realised what was happening. 

He heard the click of a gate or door. His feet 
had left the gravel or cinder upon which they had 
been walking and were now apparently shuffling 
over flagstones. Then, by an added chill to the 
cold air, and a certain echo in the footsteps, he 
knew that he was being pushed down some sort 
of alley or cul de sac. 

He was twisted from left to right and from 
right to left with the greatest rapidity, and half 
the extraordinary journey was not completed 
before he had utterly lost all idea of his where- 
abouts. 

The noise of the distant rescuers at the scene 
of the accident sank into a low hum and then 
died completely away. 

He seemed to be rushing along some maze or 


Scientific Kidnapping 89 

city of the dead, for no human sound save the 
noise of his and his captors’ movements reached 
his ears. 

In four or five minutes he was rudely stopped. 
He heard a knock upon a door, a peculiar and 
obviously signal knock. There was a sound of a 
window opening, a low whistle, and he was pushed 
forward up a few steps and into a house, the door 
of which was immediately closed behind him. 

He was hustled along an evil-smelling passage, 
down a flight of uneven stone stairs and into a 
room, a room much warmer than the cold passages 
which he had traversed, a room in which there 
were several people, and where a fire was burning. 

The cruel grip which had held him like a vice 
in its strength and ingenuity was a little relaxed. 

He was pushed down upon a chair. The air 
of the room was stifling, his body was wet with 
perspiration, owing to the sudden transition from 
cold to heat, the restricted breathing, and the 
extreme rapidity of his progress. 

A hand rested on his cheek for a moment and 
then plucked the filthy handkerchief from his 
mouth. 

The duke took a deep breath. Foul as the air 
was in this place it seemed at this moment balmy 
as those breezes laden with cassia and nard which 
blow thiough the Gardens of the Hesperides. 

Then a voice spoke: “You will be all right, 
guv’nor. Sorry to ’ave ’ad to treat you a bit 
rough like, but, ’pon my siwey, we was n’t goin’ 


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to lose a bit-of-orl-right like this. Just for pre- 
caution’s sake, as you might sye, we ’ll ” 

The sentence was not concluded, but the duke 
felt his legs were being tied to the legs of the 
chair. His arms were suddenly caught up and 
pressed behind him. He was perfectly helpless. 

Then the bandage was removed from his eyes. 

He found himself in a place which, in his ex- 
perience, was utterly unlike anything that he had 
seen before, or even imagined. As a matter of 
fact, he was sitting trussed upon a Windsor chair 
in an underground thieves’ cellar-kitchen. 

A large fire of coal and coke glowed in the 
white-washed fire-place. There were shelves with 
crockery and other utensils on each side of the fire. 
An ancient armchair, covered with torn and dirty 
chintz, was drawn to the fire, and in it sat a very 
large fat woman of middle age. She wore heavy 
gold earrings, bracelets were upon her wrists, and 
a glinting flash from her fat and dirty fingers 
showed that the diamonds in her rings were real. 
No one could have mistaken her for an instant 
for anything else than a Jewess. 

There were five or six men in the room. 

As the duke became accustomed to the light 
of the big paraffin lamp which hung from the 
ceiling he saw that all these men were singularly 
alike. They were all clean shaven, for one thing, 
and they all seemed to have the same expression. 
Their mouths were one and all intelligent and 
slightly deferential. Their eyes flickered a good 


Scientific Kidnapping 91 

deal hither and thither and were curiously and 
quietly watchful. There was a precision about 
their movements. 

“Could they all be brothers?” he wondered 
idly, for his brain was still weakened by shock, 
“and could that fat woman with the filthy 
clothes and the rings be their mother?” 

“Now, then, guv’nor, ” said one of the men 
with perfect politeness, but with a curious under- 
note of menace in his voice, “we know who your 
lordship is. It is a fair cop. We ’ve got you ’ere, 
and of course you are not going away from ’ere 
unless you makes it nice and heasy for all parties.” 

The man spoke in a hoarse voice, but, again, 
a singularly quite voice. Menace was there, it is 
true, but there was something cringing also. 

Who could these men be ? the duke thought idly 
and as if in a dream. They looked like actors. 
Yes, they were very much like actors. Was it 
that he had 

The tiue explanation burst in upon him. He 
remembered a certain magazine article he had 
once read with a curious mixture of disgust and 
pity, a magazine article which was illustrated by 
many photographs. These men were alike for 
a very sufficient reason. A terrible discipline had 
pressed them into its irremediable mould. 

They were all old convicts. They were men 
who had “done time.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


“in cellar cool!*' 



‘HE duke knew perfectly well that he had 


A fallen into the hands of as rascally and evil 
a gang of ruffians as London could produce. He 
made no answer to the words of the man who 
had addressed him. 

“You will be better off if you listen to Sidney 
reasonable, dearie, said the horrible old woman. 
The words dropped from her lips like gouts of oil. 
“You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! 
I ’m sure nobody wants to do anything unpleasant 
to you, but folks must live, and you ’ve reely 
walked in most convenient, as you might sye. '' 

“What do you want?'’ the duke said at last. 

“Well, sir,” the man addressed as “Sidney” 
replied, “we have got you fair. Nobody saw us 
take you away. You Ve disappeared from the 
accident without leaving a trace like.” As he 
spoke, the man's servile, wolfish face was a sheer 
wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue mois- 
tened his lips as if in anticipation of something. 
“You see, nobody can’t possibly know where 
you 've come. They will think you were smashed 
up, or got up and went away, out of your mind, 
after the shock. People ’ll hunt all over London 


In Cellar Cool ! ” 


93 


for you, no doubt, but they won’t never think 
of us. Now, we ’ve got your very ’ansom ticker 
and a few quids, and the gold purse that ’eld 
them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty 
pound in notes in the pocket-book when we 
opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told us 
who you was. Now, our contention is that them 
as ’as as much money as you must contribute to 
them as ’as n’t. ” 

He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and 
a horrid little uncertain chuckle went round the 
room, a chuckle with something not quite human 
in it. 

“Now, wot I says,” the man continued, “is 
this. We will return you the ticker because it 
won’t be of much use to us, except the gold case. 
We ’ll keep the chain and the quid box and the 
quids, and we ’ll also keep the fi-pun notes. 
Then, my lord, you ’ll sit down and write a little 
note to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I 
see you have got the cheque-book with you, or 
I ’ve got it at least. Now, the question is what 
the amount of this ’ere cheque shall be. You, 
being a rich man, we cannot put it low, and we 
hold all the cards. Let ’s say three thousand 
pounds. In addition to that you ’ll give us your 
word of honour as a gentleman to take no pro- 
ceedings about this ’ere little matter and say 
nothing about it to nobody. When that ’s done, 
by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you can go, 
and I am sure,” he concluded, “with an ’eart^' 


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hand-shake from yours truly, being a gentleman, 
as I am sure you will prove, and a lord, too. ’’ 

The duke considered. 

Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, 
though to him it meant little or nothing. At the 
same time his whole manhood rose up within 
him — ^the stubbornness of his race steeled him 
against granting these miscreants their demand. 
A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His 
upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously. 

At last he answered the man. 

“I ’ll see you d d,” he said, “before I give 

you a single halfpenny! And let me tell you 
this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are 
bringing upon yourselves a suie and speedy 
punishment. You think, because I am wealthy 
and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. 
If you were just a little cleverer than you are you 
would understand that the Duke of Paddington 
cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without 
urgent inquiry being made for him. You will 
infallibly be discovered, and you know what the 
result of that will be.” 

“Not quite so fast,” said the man called Sidney, 
in a smooth, quiet voice. “It is all very well 
to talk like this ’ere, but you don’t know what 
you are a-saying of. You don’t know in whose 
hands you are. People like us don’t stick at 
nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do 
as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard 
of any more. You think we run a risk? Well, 


‘‘In Cellar Cool !” 


95 


I 11 tell you this — I ’ve had a good deal of pro- 
fessional experience — ^this is one of the easiest 
jobs to keep out of sight that I ’ve ever ’ad. Now, 
supposing there ’ad been a little high-class job 
in the West End — ^matter of a jeweller’s shop, 
say — or a house in Park Lyne. In that case we 
should be pretty certain to have some ’tecs nosing 
round this quarter, finding out where I or some 
other of my pals had been the night before. We 
should be watched, and the fences would be 
watched, until they could prove something against 
us. But in this case the police won’t have a 
single idea wot will connect us with your dis- 
appearance. ” 

“I am not going to argue with you, my man, ” 
the duke answered calmly. “I am not accus- 
tomed to bandy words with anybody, much less 
a filthy criminal ruffian like you! You can go 
to blazes, the whole lot of you! I won’t give 
any of you a farthing!” 

Even now the man who was the- spokesman of 
that furtive, evil crew did not lose his temper. 
He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking 
what the duke had said and weighing it over in 
his mind. 

“All right,” he answered at length. “That is 
what you say now. You will say different soon. 
I am not going to make any bones about it, but 
I ’ll tell you the programme, and that is this: 
To-night we are going to tie you up and take you 
down into a cellar. There ’s another one below 


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this, and it ain’t got no light nor fire, neither. It 
is simply a hole in the foundations of the house, 
that is wot it is. And the rats are all-alive-oh 
down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little 
furry rats with pink ’ands. You will stay down 
there to-night, and to-morrow morning I ’ll come 
and ask you this question again. I should like 
to get the business settled and over by mid-day. 
No use wasting time when there ’s work to be 
done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your 
blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to 
our little proposals by that time— well, then, I 
can only say that — much as I should regret 
’aving to do it- — ^we should ’ave to try what a little 
physical persuasion means — ^some ’ot sealing- 
wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two 
of wood ’ammered between the nail and the 
finger, or even a good deal worse than that. 
Well, it ’ll all depend on you.” 

There was something so repulsively insolent in 
the man’s voice that the duke’s sense of outrage 
and anger was even greater than his fear. 

He could not, did not, believe that these men 
would do anything of what they had threatened. 
His whole upbringing and training had made it 
almost impossible for him to believe that such a 
thing could happen to him. It was incredible 
— perfectly astounding and incredible- — ^that he 
had even met with this misfortune, that he was 
where he was. But that the results of his cap- 
ture would be pushed so far as the man said he 


- In Cellar Cool ! ” 


97 


was absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent 
sense of anger mastered ever3rthing. 

“Don’t try and frighten me, you scoundrel!” 
he said. “I won’t give you a penny!” 

Still in the same even voice the ruffian con- 
cluded his address. The circle of the others had 
come closer and surrounded the duke on every 
side, while the old woman in the background 
peered over the shoulders of two men, looking 
at the bound victim with a curious, detached 
interest, as a naturalist might watch a cat play- 
ing with a mouse. 

“Lastly,” said the man, “if you go on being 
silly, after you ’ve enjoyed a day or two with the 
pleasant little gymes I ’ve told you of, why, I 
shall just come down into that ’ere cellar one 
morning, hold up your chin, and cut your throat 
like a pig! We sha’n’t want to have you about 
if you stick to what you say, and a little cement 
down in that ’ere forgotten cellar — ^which, in fact, 
nobody knows of at all, except me and my pals 
here — ^will soon hide you away, my lord! There 
won’t be any stately funeral and ancestral vault 
for the Duke of Paddington!” 

For the first time a chill came into the duke’s 
blood. He felt also a tremendous weariness, 
and his head throbbed unbearably. Yet there 
was a toughness within him, a strength of pur- 
pose and will which was not easily to be van- 
quished or weakened. 

In a flash he reviewed the chances of the situa- 


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tion. They were going to put him in a cellar 
till the morning. Well, he could bear that, no 
doubt. He might have time to think the whole 
matter over — ^to decide whether he should weaken 
or not, whether he should yield to these menacing 
demands. At the present his whole soul rose 
up in revolt against budging an inch from what 
he had said. His intense pride of birth and 
station, so deeply ingrained within him, turned 
with an almost physical nausea against allowing 
himself to be intimidated by such carrion as 
these. Should the dirty sweepings of the gaols 
of England frighten a man in whose veins ran 
the blood of centuries of rulers ? 

He ground his teeth together and looked the 
spokesman full in the face. He even smiled a 
little. 

“I don’t believe,” he said in a quiet voice, 
“that you are fool enough to do any of these 
things with which you have threatened me, but 
I tell you that if you do you will find me exactly 
the same as you find me now. You might 
threaten some people and frighten them suc- 
cessfully. You might torture some people into 
doing what you say, but you will neither frighten 
me in the first instance, nor torture me into 
acquiescence in the second. You have got hold 
of the wrong person this time, my man, and what 
you think is going to be such a nice thing for you 
and your crew of scoundrels will in the end, if you 
carry out your threats, mean nothing else for all 


'' In Cellar Cool ! 


99 


of you but the gallows. You may kill me if you 
like. I quite realise that at present I am in your 
power, though I do not think it at all likely I 
shall be so for very long. But even if you kill me 
you will get nothing out of me beyond the things 
you have stolen already. Y ou have a very limited 
knowledge of life if you imagine that anybody of 
my rank and breed is going to let himself be 
altered from his purpose by such filth as you!” 

There was a low and ominous murmur from 
the men as the duke concluded. The evil, 
snake-like faces grew more evil still. 

They clustered together under the lamp, talking 
and whispering rapidly to each other, and the 
whimsical thought, even in that moment of ex- 
treme peril, came to the duke that there was a 
chamber of horrors resembling in an extraordinary 
degree that grisly underground room at the 
waxwork show in Baker Street, which, out of 
curiosity, he had once visited. There were the 
same cold, watchful eyes, the mobile and not 
unintelligent lips, the abnormally low foreheads, 
of the waxen monsters in the museum. 

There was nothing human about any of them; 
they were ape-like and foul. 

The man called “Sidney” turned round. From 
a bulging side-pocket of his coat he took out the 
duke’s valuable repeater. 

“Ah,” he said, “I see that this ’ere little trans- 
action ’as only occupied ’arf an hour from the time 
when we found you to the present. We came 


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The Socialist 


out, thinking we might pick up a ticker or two or 
a portmanteau among the wreck. We got some- 
thing a good deal better. Never mind what you 
say, we will find means to convince you right 
enough, but there is no time now. We ’re going 
to put you down in that there cellar I spoke of 
among the rats, and you will wait there till to- 
morrow morning. Meanwhile me and my pals 
will all be seen in different part's of London, in a 
bar or talking innocent-like to each other, and 
we will take jolly good care we will be seen by 
some of the ’tecs as knows us. There won’t be 
no connecting us with your lordship’s disap- 
pearance. Now then, come on!” 

His voice, which had been by no means so 
certain and confident as it was before, suddenly 
changed into a snarl of fury. The duke heard 
it without fear and with a sense of exultation. 
He knew that his serenity had gone home, that 
his contempt had stung even this wolf-pig man. 

As if catching the infection of the note, the 
unseen ruffian behind the chair, who held his 
arms, gave them a sharp, painful wrench. 

The men crowded round him. His legs were 
untied from the chair legs and then retied to- 
gether. His arms were strongly secured behind 
him, and he was half pushed, half carried to a 
door at the back of the kitchen. 

The leader of the gang went before, carrying a 
tallow candle in a battered tin holder. 

Passing through the door, they came into a 


“ In Cellar Cool ! ” 


lOI 


small back cellar- kitchen, in which there was a 
sink and a tap. A large tub, apparently used for 
washing, stood in one corner. Deft hands pulled 
this, half-full of greasy water as it was, away from 
where it originally stood. 

A stone flag with an iron ring let into it was 
revealed. 

A man pulled this up with an effort, revealing 
a square of yawning darkness, into which a short 
ladder descended. The leader went down first, 
and with some difficulty the helpless body of the 
duke was lowered down after him, though the 
depth could not have been more than eight feet 
or so. 

When he had been pushed into this noisome 
hole the duke saw by the light of the candle which 
“Sidney” carried that he was in an underground 
chamber, perhaps some ten feet by ten. The 
walls were damp and oozing with saltpetre. The 
floor was of clay. 

Looking up in the flickering light of the dip he 
could see where the ancient brick foundations of 
the house had been built into the ground. He 
was now, in fact, below the lowest cellar, in an 
unsuspected and forgotten chamber, left by the 
builders two hundred years ago. 

“Now, this ’ere comfortable little detached 
residence, dook,” said the man, “is where we 
generally puts our swag when it ’s convenient to 
keep it for a bit. Nobody knows of it. Nobody 
has ever learned of it. We discovered it quite 


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The Socialist 


by chance like. That man wot comes round and 
collects the rents ain’t an idea of its existence. 
This ’ere is Rat Villa, this is. Now, good-night! 
’Ope to see your lordship ’appy and ’ealthy in the 
morning! You will observe we have left you 
your right arm free to brush the vermin off. ” 

The duke lay down upon his back, looking up 
at the sinister ruffian with the candle and the 
dark stone ceiling of his prison. 

Then, with an impudent, derisive chuckle Sidney 
climbed the ladder, and immediately afterwards 
the stone slab fell into its place with a soft thud. 
The duke was alone in the dark! 


CHAPTER IX 


MARY Marriott’s initiation 

T he morning was not so foggy as the last three 
terrible days had been. 

Dull it was even yet — ^the skies were dark and 
lowering — but the acrid, choking fog had merci- 
fully disappeared. 

But Mary Marriott thought nothing of this 
change in the weather as she drove down in a 
hansom cab to the house of J ames Fabian Rose 
in the little quiet street behind Westminster 
Abbey. It was half-past twelve. The great ex- 
pedition to the slums of the West End was now 
to start. 

Since that extraordinary day upon which her 
prospects had seemed so hopeless and so forlorn 
Mary had been in a state of suspended expectation. 
Suddenly, without any indication of what was 
to happen, she had been caught out of her drab 
monotony and taken into the very centre of a 
great, new pulsating movement. The conclusion 
of the day upon which she had again failed to 
achieve a theatrical engagement was incredibly 
splendid, incredibly wonderful ! 

She had had twenty-four hours to think it over, 
and during the whole of that quiet time in her 
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104 The Socialist 

little Bloomsbury fiat, she had lived as if in a 
dream. 

Was it possible, she asked herself over and over 
again — could it be true that the man with the 
mustard-coloured beard^ — ^the great James Fabian 
Rose — ^had indeed called upon her, had found 
her preparing her simple evening meal, and had 
taken her away through the fog to the brilliant 
little house in Westminster? 

And was it true that she was really destined to be 
a leader upon the stage of the great propaganda 
of the Socialist party? Was it true that she out 
of all the actresses — ^the thousands of actresses 
unknown to fame- — ^had been picked and chosen 
for this role — ^to be the stai of a huge and or- 
ganised social movement. 

As the cab rolled down the grey streets of 
London towards Westminster, Mary found that 
she was asking herself these questions again and 
again. 

When she arrived at Rose’s house she knew 
that that was no delusion. The maid who 
opened the door ushered her in at once, and Mrs. 
Rose was waiting in the hall. 

‘ ‘ Oh, my dear, ” Mrs. Rose said ; ‘ ‘ here you are at 
last! Do you know, when Fabian captured you 
the other night in the fog and brought you here 
we all knew that you were just the very person 
we wanted. We were so afraid- — at least I was, 
nobody else was — that you would vanish away 
and we should not see you any more. Now, here 


Mary Marriott’s Initiation 105 

you are! You have come to fulfil your destiny, 
and make your first great study in the environ- 
ment, and among the scenes, of what you will 
afterwards present to the world with all your 
tragic power. My dear, they are all upstairs; 
they are all waiting. Two or three motor-cars 
will be round in about half an hour to take you 
right away into Dante’s Inferno! Come along! 
Come along!” 

As she concluded Mrs. Rose led Mary up the 
stairs to the drawing-room and shouted out in her 
sweet, high-pitched voice: “Fabian! Mr. Good- 
rick! Peter! She has come! Here she is! Now 
we ’re all complete.” 

Mary followed her hostess into the drawing- 
room. 

There she found her friends of the first won- 
derful night, augmented by various people whom 
she did not know. 

J ames Fabian Rose, pallid of face, and with his 
strange eyes burning with a curious intensity, 
came forward to greet her. He took her little 
hand in his and shook it heartily. Aubrey Flood 
was there also, wearing a grey overcoat, and he 
also had the intent expression of one who waits. 

Peter Conrad, the clergyman, was not in clerical 
clothes. He wore a lounge suit of pepper-and- 
salt colour, and held a very heavy blackthorn 
stick in his right hand. The famous editor of the 
Daily Wire, Charles Goodrich, was almost incog- 
nito beneath the thick tweed overcoat with a 


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The Socialist 


high collar, from which his insignificant face and 
straw-coloured moustache looked out with a 
certain pathetic appeal. 

Mary’s welcome was extraordinarily cordial. 
She felt again as she had felt upon that astonishing 
night when she had first met all these people. 
She felt as if they all thought that an enormous 
deal depended upon her, that they were awaiting 
her with real anxiety. 

On that chill mid-day the beautiful drawing- 
room, with its decorations by William Morris and 
Walter Crane, had little of its appeal. It seemed 
bare and colourless to Mary at least. It was a 
mere ante-room of some imminent experience. 

She said as much to Fabian Rose. ‘ ‘ Mr. Rose, ’ ’ 
she said, “I have come, and here I am. Now, 
what are you going to do with me? Where are 
you going to take me? What am I going to see? 
I am all excitement! I am all anxiousness!” 

“My dear girl, ” Rose answered, “it is so charm- 
ing of you to say that. That is just the attitude 
in which I want you to be — ^all excitement and 
anxiousness!” 

They crowded round her, regarding her, as she 
could not but feel, as the centre of the picture, 
and her trepidation and excitement grew with 
the occasion. She was becoming, indeed, rather 
overstrained, when Mrs. Rose took her by the 
arm. 

“My dear,” she said, “don’t get excited until 
it is absolutely necessary. Remember that you 


Mary Marriott’s Initiation 107 

are here to-day simply to receive certain im- 
pressions, which are to germinate in your brain; 
seeds to be sown in your temperament, which 
shall blossom out in your heart. Therefore do 
not waste nervous force before the occasion 
arises. I am not going, you will be the only 
woman upon this expedition.” 

Mary looked round in a rather helpless way. 

“Oh!” she said, “am I to be all alone?” 

There came a sudden, sharp cackle of laughter 
from the famous editor. 

My dear Miss Marriott, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ all alone ? ’ ’ 

Looking round upon the group of people who 
were indicated by the sweep of the little man’s 
hand, Mary realised that she would be by no 
means alone. 

Then she noticed, as she had not done before, 
that in the back recesses of the drawing-room 
were three or four other men, who, somehow or 
other, did not seem to belong to the world of her 
companions. 

Rose caught the glance. 

“Oh,” he said, “I must introduce you to the 
bodyguard!” 

He took her by the arm, and led her to the other 
end of the drawing-room. 

There were four people standing there. One 
was clean-shaven, and wore a uniform of dark 
blue, braided with black braid, and held a peaked 
hat in his hand. Two of the others were bearded, 
very tall, strong and alert. They were dressed 


io8 


The Socialist 


in ordinary dark clothes, and Mary felt — your 
experienced actress has always an eye for costume, 
and the necessity of it- — that these two also sug- 
gested uniform. 

The fourth person, who stood a little in the 
background of the other three, was a man with a 
heavy black moustache, hair cut short, except 
for a curious, shining wave over the forehead, and 
was obviously a strong and lusty constable in 
plain clothes. 

“This is Miss Marriott, gentlemen,” Rose said. 

The three men in the foreground bowed. The 
man at the back automically raised his right arm 
in military salute. 

“These gentlemen. Miss Marriott,” Rose said, 
“are going to take us into the places where we 
have to go. They are going to protect us. In- 
spector Brown and Inspector Smith, of Scotland 
Yard, and Inspector Green, of the County Council. 

Mary bowed and smiled. 

Then the tallest of the bearded men said: 
“Excuse me, miss, where we are going it would be 
quite inadvisable for you to wear the clothes you 
are wearing now.” 

He spoke quite politely, but with a certain de- 
cision and sharpness, at which Mary wondered. 

“I don’t quite understand,” she said. 

“Well, Miss Marriott,” the inspector answered, 
“you see we are going into some very queer places 
indeed, and as you will be the only lady with us, 
you had better wear' ” 


Mary Marriott’s Initiation 109 

“Oh, I quite forgot,” Fabian Rose said. “Of 
course, you told me that before, Mr. Brown. We 
have got a nurse’s costume for you. Miss Marriott. 
You see, a nurse can go an3rwhere in these places 
where no other woman can go. By the way,” 
he added, as a sort of after-thought, “this must 
seem rather terrible to you. I hope you are not 
frightened?” 

Mary smiled. She looked round at the group 
of big men in the drawing-room, and made a pretty 
little gesture with her hands. 

“Frightened!” she said, and smiled. 

“Come along,” Rose said, “my wife will fit 
you up. ” 

In half an hour a curious party had left West- 
minster in two closed motor-cars, and were rolling 
up Park Lane. When Oxford Street was reached 
the car in which the party sat went two or three 
hundred yards eastward. The car in which the 
other half were bestowed moved as far to the 
west. 

Every one alighted, and the cars disap- 
peared. 

In half an hour after that the whole party, by 
devious routes carefully planned beforehand, 
met in a centre of the strange network of slums 
which are in the vicinity of the Great Western 
Station of Paddington. 

These slums the ordinary wayfarer knows no- 
thing of. 

A man may ride down some main thoroughfare 


I lO 


The Socialist 


to reach the great railway gate of the West and 
realise nothing of the fact that, between some 
gin palace and large lodging-house, a little alley- 
entry may conduct the curious or the unwary 
into an inferno as sordid, as terrible, and even 
more dangerous than any lost quarter of Stepney 
or Whitechapel. 

London, indeed. West End London, is quite 
unaware that among its stateliest houses, in the 
very middle of its thoroughfares, there are mod- 
ern caves in which the troglod3rtes still dwell 
which are sinister and dark as an3rthing can be 
in modern life. 

Inspector Brown took the lead. 

“Gentlemen, ” he said, “I am going to take you 
now through some streets which none of you have 
probably ever seen before, to a certain district 
about a quarter of a mile beyond Paddington 
Station, and where I shall show you exactly 
what I am instructed to show you. I am sorry 
to have to make you walk so far, and especially 
as we have a lady with us, but there is no alterna- 
tive. We cannot take a cab, or several cabs, to 
where we are going. A cab has never been seen 
in the quarter which you are entering with me. 
Even as we go we shall be known and marked. 
We shall not be interfered with in any dangerous 
way because you are with me and my colleagues, 
but, at the same time, the noise of our arrival 
will spread through the whole quarter, and I 
shall only be able to show you the place some- 


Ill 


Mary Marriott’s Initiation 

what dulled of its activities, and, as it were, 
frightened by our arrival.” 

“I see,” Aubrey Flood answered. “I see, 
inspector. What you mean is that the rabbits 
will all be terrorised by the arrival of the ferret!” 

“Well, sir,” the inspector answered, “I am 
sure that is not a bad way of putting it. ” 

“Is that a policeman? Do you mean to say 
he is a detective?” Mary asked James Fabian 
Rose. “I thought those people were so illiterate 
and stupid. ” 

The great Socialist laughed. 

“My dear,” he answered, “you have so much, 
so very much to learn. Inspector Brown is one 
of the most intelligent men you could meet with 
anywhere. He speaks three languages perfectly. 
He reads Shakespeare. He understands social 
economics almost as well as I do myself. If he 
had had better chances he would have been a 
leader at the bar or an archdeacon. As it is he 
protects society without reclame, or without ac- 
knowledgment, and his emolument for exercising 
his extreme talents in this direction is, I believe, 
something under £2^0 a year. 

Mary said nothing. It seemed, indeed, the only 
thing to do, but very many new thoughts were 
born within her as she listened to the pleasant, 
cultured voice of the bearded man, who looked 
as if he ought to be in uniform, and who led the 
party with so confident and so blithe a certainty. 

They walked through streets of squalor. They 


1 12 


The Socialist 


progressed through by-ways, ill-smelling and 
garbage-laden. The very spawn of London 
squealed and rolled in the gutters, while grey, 
evil-faced men and women peered at them from 
doorways and spat a curse as they went 

by. 

They wound in and out of the horrid labyrinth 
of the West End slums until the great roar of 
London’s traffic died away and became an indis- 
tinct hum, until they were all conscious of the 
fact that they were in another and different 
sphere. 

They had arrived at the underworld. 

They were come at last to grip with facts that 
stank and bit and gripped. 

Mary turned a white face to Fabian Rose. 

“Mr. Rose,” she said, “I had no idea that 
anything could be quite so sordid and horuible 
as this. Why! the very air is different!” 

“My child,” the great Socialist answered, his 
hand upon her shoulder, the pale face and mus- 
tard-coloured beard curiously merged into some- 
thing very eager, and yet full of pity. “My 
child, you are as yet only upon the threshold of 
what we are bringing you to see. We have 
brought you to-day to these terrible places so 
that you may drink in all their horrors, all their 
hideousness, and all their misery, and transform 
them- — ^through the alchemy of your art- — into a 
great and splendid appeal, which shall convulse 
the indifferent, the cruel, and the rich. ” 


Mary Marriott’s Initiation 113 

“Let us go on!” Mary said in a very quiet voice. 

They went on. 

And now the houses seemed to grow closer 
together, the foetid atmosphere became more 
difficult for unaccustomed lungs to breathe, the 
roads became more difficult to walk upon, 
the faces which watched and gibbered round 
their progress were menacing, more awful, more 
hopeless. 

They walked in a compact body, and then 
suddenly Inspector Brown turned round to his 
little battalion. 

He addressed Fabian Rose. 

“Sir, ” he said, “I think we have arrived at the 
starting point. Shall we begin now?” 

Mary heard the words, and turned to Fabian 
Rose. 

“Oh, Mr. Rose!” she said, “what terrible 
places, what dreadful places these are! I had no 
idea, though I have lived in London all my life, 
that such places existed. Why, I — oh, I don’t 
know what I mean exactly — but why should such 
places be?” 

“Because, my dear Miss Marriott,” Rose 
answered — ^and she saw that his face was lit up 
with excitement and interest — “because of the 
curse of capitalism, because of the curse of modern 
life which we are endeavouring to remove.” 

Mary stamped her little foot upon the 
ground. 

“I see,” she said. “Why, I would hang the 


1 14 The Socialist 

man who was responsible for all this! Who is 
he? Tell me!^^ 

Rose looked gravely at her. 

“My dear,’' he answered, “the man who is 
responsible for all this that immediately sur- 
rounds us is the man whom we hope to hold up 
to the whole of England as a type of menace 
and danger to the Commonwealth. It is the 
Duke of Paddington!” 


CHAPTER X 


NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD 

O N the afternoon when the Bishop of Carlton, 
Lord Hayle and Lady Constance Camborne 
had left the Duke of Paddington's rooms in St. 
Paul’s College, Oxford, they went back to the 
Randolph Hotel, where the bishop and his daugh- 
ter were staying. 

Lord Hayle accompanied them, and the father, 
his son and daughter, went up to the private 
sitting-room which the bishop occupied. 

The fog — ^the nasty, damp river mist, rather, 
which takes the place of fog in Oxford- — ^was now 
thicker than ever, but a bright fire burnt upon 
the hearth of the comfortable sitting-room in 
the hotel, and one of the servants had drawn 
down the blinds and made the place cheery and 
home-like. 

The Cambornes had only been three days in 
Oxford, but Lady Constance had already trans- 
formed the somewhat bare sitting-room into 
something of wont and use; the place was full 
of flowers, all the little personalia that a cultured 
and wealthy girl carries about with her, showed 
it. A piano had been brought in, photographs 
of friends stood about, and the huge writing- 


The Socialist 


1 16 

table, specially put there for the use of the bishop, 
stood near the fireplace covered with papers. 

The three sat down and some tea was brought. 
“Well, Connie dear,” Lord Hayle said, “and 
what do you think of John? You have often 
heard me talk about him. He is the best friend 
I have got in the world, and he is one of the 
finest chaps I know. What do you think of him, 
Connie?” 

“I thought he was charming, Gerald,” Lady 
Constance answered, “far more charming than I 
had expected. Of course, I have known that 
you and he have been friends all the time you have 
been up, but I confess I did not expect to see 
anybody quite so pleasant and S3mipathetic. ” 
“My dear girl,” Lord Hayle answered, “you 
don’t suppose I should be intimate friends with 
anybody who was not pleasant and sympathetic? ” 
“Oh, no, I don’t mean that, Gerald,” the girl 
replied; “but, after all, the duke is in quite a 
special position, isn’t he?” 

“How do you mean?” said Lord Hayle. 

“Well, Gerald, he is not quite like all the other 
young men one meets of our own class. Of course 
he is, in a way, but what I mean is that one ex- 
pected a boy who was so stupendously rich and 
important to be a little more conscious of it than 
the duke was. He seemed quite nice and natural. ’ ’ 
The bishop, who was sipping his tea and stretch- 
ing out his shapely, gaitered feet to the fire, gave 
a little chuckle of satisfaction. 


News Arrives at Oxford 117 

“My dear Constance, ” he said, “the duke is all 
you say, of course, in the way of importance and 
so on, but at the same time, he is just the simple 
gentleman that one would expect to meet. I also 
thought him a charming fellow, and I congratulate 
Gerald upon his friendship.” 

The bishop sipped his tea and said nothing 
more. He was gazing dreamily into the fire, 
while his son and daughter talked together. All 
was going very well. There was no doubt that 
the two young people had been mutually pleased 
with each other. Rich as the Earl of Camborne 
and Bishop of Carlton was, celebrated as he was, 
sure as he was of the Archbishopric when dear old 
Doctor Arbuthnot — ^now very shaky — should be 
translated to heaven. Lord Camborne was, never- 
theless, not insensible of the fact that a marriage 
between his daughter and the Duke of Paddington 
would crown a long and distinguished career with 
a befitting finis. 

His own earldom was as old as the duke’s title. 
There would be nothing incongruous in the 
match. Yet at the same time it would be a very 
fine thing indeed. All was well with the world, 
with the bishop, and the world was still a very 
pleasant place. 

It was now about half-past five. 

The bishop. Lady Constance, and Lord Hayle 
were to dine with Sir Andrew Anderson, a Scotch 
baronet, who had a seat some eight miles away 
from Oxford. 


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The Socialist 


The bishop’s motor-car was to be ready at half- 
past six, and they would reach Packington 
Grange by seven. 

“What a blessing it is, the bishop said, break- 
ing in upon the conversation of his son and daugh- 
ter, “that the automobile has been invented. 
Here we are, sitting comfortably by the fire at 
half-past five. There is time to change without 
hurry or disturbance, and by dinner time we shall 
be at Packington. In my days, my dear Gerald, 
if one wanted to dine so far away from Oxford 
one had to get permission from the dean to stay 
all night. It would have been impossible for me, 
as an undergraduate, to go back before college gates 
were finally shut. You are far more fortunate. 

“I don’t know about that, father,” Lord Hayle 
replied. “As a matter of fact, I should much 
prefer to stay the night at Packington, as you and 
Connie may possibly do so. In fact, I know the 
dean would give me permission at once, especially 
as I am with you. However, I quite agree with 
you about the joys of motoring, as I propose to 
drive the car back to Oxford myself whether you 
two return or not.” 

The bishop smiled. He was proud of his 
bright, handsome son, who had done him so much 
credit in his University career, and was already 
becoming a pronounced favourite of society. 

“Well, Gerald,” he said, “we look at things 
from a different point of view. Has the duke 
any motors, by the way?” 


News Arrives at Oxford 119 

“He has lots of motors, ” Lord Hayle answered, 
“but only one up here, which he does not often 
use. In fact, I use it as much as he does. He is 
a riding man, you know. He sticks to the horses. 
Now then, father, I must run back to college and 
change. I will be back in time to start.” 

“We had all better change, I think,” said the 
bishop, and smiling at his son he took his daughter 
by the arm, pinching it playfully, and they left 
the sitting-room for their respective bedrooms. 

As his valet assisted him the bishop thought 
with a pleasant glow that his daughter had never 
looked more beautiful. 

There was something changed about her. Of 
that he felt quite certain, and once more he 
thanked God for all the blessings of his life. 

It is a blessed thing, indeed, to be an earl of 
old lineage, and the bishop of a famous cathedral 
city, a handsome and portly man, with a beautiful 
son and daughter, the friend of princes, and 
designate to the archiepiscopal chair. 

Constance, as the maid brushed out that hair 
like ripe corn, that wonderful hair that so many 
men had eulogised, so many poets sung of, that 
hair which was often referred to by the society 
papers as if it was a national possession, sat 
thinking over the events of the afternoon. 

How charming Gerald’s friend was ! He seemed 
so strong and self-contained, yet so simple and 
so natural. Despite his great position and the 
enormous figure he made and was to make in the 


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public eye, he was yet the pleasantest of boys. 
He was unspoiled yet, she reflected, by the whirl 
and artificial va et vient of society. He had not 
yet taken up his sceptre, as it were, and had none 
of the manners of princedom. 

The whole scene had etched itself upon her 
memory. The rich and the sober old college- 
rooms, the quiet, happy meal, the talk, the music, 
and then the dramatic telegram announcing the 
anarchistic outrage to Paddington House in 
Piccadilly. 

How well the duke had taken it all. He had 
heard that the famous Florentine vase had been 
destroyed beyond hope of repair, that a picture 
which the nation would gladly have purchased 
for a fabulous sum had shown its painted glories 
to the eyes of the world for the last time. 

Yet he had not seemed unduly worried. He 
had taken the whole thing calmly, and Lady 
Constance thought it imperative that well-bred 
people should take everything calmly. 

And then, and then — ^well! he had certainly 
seemed very pleased to see her. He had been 
extremely attentive and nice. There had been 
something in his eyes. She smiled a little to 
herself, and a faint blush crept into her cheeks. 
She saw the colour as she looked into the glass 
and heard the soft swish of the ivory brush as it 
passed over her tresses. 

“I am sure,” she thought, “that he is good. 
He is so unlike the men one meets in society. 


News Arrives at Oxford 


I2I 


They all seem to have something behind their 
words, some thought which is not quite simple 
and spontaneous, which informs all that they 
say. Nearly all of them are artificial, but the 
duke was quite natural and ordinary. I am so 
glad Gerald has such a nice friend, and he seemed 
quite pleased to come and stay with us when the 
term ends. What a good idea it was that we 
proposed it. It seems odd, indeed, that the poor 
boy, with his great house in London and all the 
country seats, should stay at the Carlton or the 
Ritz when he comes to town. Really, highly 
placed as he is, he is quite lonely. Well, we ’ll 
do all we can to make him happy. ” Once more 
she said to herself: “It must be very nice for 
Gerald to have such a friend! ” though even as she 
thought it she half realised that this was not 
precisely the sole spring and fountain of her 
satisfaction with the events of the afternoon. 

At half-past six Lady Constance and her father 
met in the hall. In her long sable robe, and with 
a fleecy cloud of spun silk from China covering 
her head, she stood by the side of the earl, splendid 
in his coat of astrakhan and corded hat. All 
round them, in the hall of the Randolph, were 
people who were dressed for dinner standing and 
talking in groups. 

Many heads nodded, and there were many 
whispers as the two stood there. Every one 
knew that here was the famous young society 
beauty, Lady Constance Camborne, and that the 


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majestic old man by her side was her father, the 
earl, and the Bishop of Carlton. 

Then, as the swing doors burst open, and Lord 
Hayle, in a fur coat and a tweed cap, came bustling 
in, the onlookers whispered that this was the 
young viscount who would succeed to everything. 

The hall porter, cap in hand, came up to the trio. 

The car was waiting for his lordship. 

The servants grouped around rushed to the 
doors. The muttering of the great red motor 
waiting outside became suddenly redoubled as the 
earl and his children left the hall. There was a 
little sigh, and then a buzz of talk, as the three 
distinguished people disappeared into the night 
opposite the Museum. 

The dinner party at Sir Andrew Anderson^s was 
a somewhat ceremonious function, and was also 
rather dull. 

The Scotch baronet was a “dour laird,” who 
had been a member of the last Government, and 
the visit was one of those necessary and stately 
occasions to which people in the bishop’s position 
are subject. 

Sir Andrew had no son, and his two daughters 
were learned girls, who had taken their degree 
at St. Andrew’s University, and looked upon 
Lady Constance as a mere society butterfly, al- 
though they thawed a little when talking to Lord 
Hayle. It was all over about a quarter-past ten, 
much earlier than the bishop and Lady Constance 
had anticipated. 


News Arrives at Oxford 


123 


The bishop’s suit-case had been put into the 
car, and Lady Constance also had her luggage. 
Nothing had been decided as to whether the 
Cambornes should stay the night or not, though 
the party had assumed that they would do so. 
As, however, at a little after ten the conversation 
languished, and everybody was obviously rather 
bored with everybody else, the bishop decided 
to return to Oxford with his son, and before the 
half-hour struck the great Mercedes car was once 
more rushing through the wintry Oxfordshire 
lanes towards the ancient City of Spires. 

“Well,” Lord Hayle said, “I have never in all 
my life, father, been to such a dull house, or been 
so bored. Did n’t you feel like that, too, Connie ? ’ ’ 
“Indeed, I did, Gerald,” the girl answered. 
“It was perfectly terrible!” 

Slowly the bishop replied — 

“I know, my dears, that it was not an enlivening 
entertainment, but Sir Andrew, you must remem- 
ber, is a very solid man, and is well liked by the 
country. He will be in the Cabinet when this 
wretched Radical and Socialistic ministry meets 
the fate it deserves, and, you know, Hayle, that 
in our position, it is necessary to endure a good 
deal sometimes. One must keep in with one’s 
own class. We must be back to back, we must 
be solid. I have nothing to say against Sir 
Andrew, except that, of course, he is not a very 
intellectual man. At the same time, he is liked 
at court, and is, I believe,” the bishop concluded 


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The Socialist 


with a chuckle, “one of the most successful 
breeders of short-horns in the three kingdoms. ” 

The motor-car brought the party back into 
civilisation. It rolled up the High, past the 
age-worn fronts of the colleges, brilliantly illu- 
minated now by the tall electric light standards. 
They flitted by St. Mary’s, where Cranmer made 
his great renunciation, past the new front of 
Brazenose, up to the now dismantled Carfax. 

As they turned The Corn was almost deserted, 
in a flash they were abreast of the Martyrs’ 
Memorial, and the car was at rest before the doors 
of Oxford’s great hotel. 

The three entered the warm, comfortable 
hall. 

“Good-night, father!” Lady Constance said 
“Good-night, Gerald, I shall go straight up- 
stairs!” 

She kissed her father and brother, and turned 
to the right towards the lift. 

“I think I will have a final smoke, father,” 
Lord Hayle said, “before I go back to college. 
There ’s lots of time yet. Shall we go upstairs, 
or shall we go into the smoking-room?” 

“Oh, well, let us go into the smoking-room,” 
said the bishop. “It ’s a comfortable place. ” 

They gave their coats to an attendant, and 
went through the door under the stairs into the 
smoking-room. 

No one else was there, though a great fire 
burned upon the hearth, and drawing two padded 


News Arrives at Oxford 


125 


armchairs up before it they sat down and lit 
their cigarettes. 

‘‘I think,” said the bishop, “that I shall have 
a glass of Vichy. Will you have anything more, 
dear boy?” 

“No, thanks, father,” Lord Hayle answered, 
“but I will ring the bell for you.” 

He pressed the button, and the waiter came 
into the room, shortly afterwards returning with 
the bishop’s aerated water. 

Lord Hayle was well known at the Randolph. 
He sometimes gave dinners there, in preference 
to using the Mitre or the Clarendon. He and 
the duke sometimes dined there together. 

As he was sitting with his father, quietly 
talking over the events of .the day, one of the 
managers of the hotel came hurriedly into the 
smoking-room and up to the earl and the viscount. 

“My lord, ” he said, and his face was very white 
and agitated. ‘ ‘ I fear I have very sad news for you. ’ ’ 

There was something in the man’s voice that 
made both the bishop and his son turn round in 
alarm. 

“What is it?” said Lord Hayle. 

“My lord,” the manager continued, “a tele- 
gram has just reached us that there has been a 
terrible railway accident to the six o’clock train 
from here to Paddington. We are informed that 
the Duke of Paddington, your friend, my lord, 
was in the train, and it is feared that his grace 
has been killed. ” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE DISCOVERY 

I T really was appalling! 

All the others had seen this sort of thing 
many times, and it did not appeal to them with 
the same first flush of horror and dismay as it did 
to Mary Marriott. 

She turned to Fabian Rose. 

“Oh, Mr. Rose,'’ she said, “it is dreadful, more 
dreadful than I could ever have thought!” 

“There is much worse than this, my dear,” he 
answered in a grave tone, from which all the 
accustomed mockery had gone. “A painful ex- 
perience is before you, but you must endure it. 

At the end of that time ” 

Mary looked into the great Socialist’s face, and 
she knew what his unspoken words would have 
conveyed. She knew well that she was on a 
trial, a test ; that this strange expedition had been 
devised, not only that her art as an actress might 
be stimulated to its highest power, but that the 
very strings of her pity and womanhood should 
be touched also. Her new friends knew well that 
when at last she was on the boards of the Park 
Lane Theatre, acting there for all the rich and 

126 


127 


The Discovery 

fashionable world to see, her work could only 
accomplish its great mission with success if it 
came poignantly from her heart. 

“Yes, she said in answer to his look, “I am 
beginning to see, I am beginning to hear the 
cry of the down-trodden and the oppressed, the 
wailing of the poor.'' 

Rose nodded gravely. 

“Now, Miss Marriott and gentlemen," said 
Inspector Brown, “we will turn down here, if you 
please. I should like to show you one or two 
tenements. " 

As he spoke he turned to the right, down a 
narrow alley. Tall, grimy old houses rose up 
on either side of them, and there was hardly 
room for two members of the party to walk 
abreast. The flags upon which they trod were 
soft with grease and filth. The air was foetid 
and chill. It was, indeed, as though they were 
treading a passage-way to horror! 

The whole party came out into a court, a sort 
of quadrangle some thirty yards by twenty. 
The space between the houses and the floor of the 
quadrangle was of beaten earth, though here and 
there some half-uprooted flagstone showed that 
it had once been paved. The whole of it was 
covered with garbage and refuse. Decayed cab- 
bage leaves lay in little pools of greasy water. 
Old boots and indescribable rags of filthy clothes 
were piled on heaps of cinders. 

As they came into the square Mary shrank 


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The Socialist 


back with a little cry ; her foot had almost trodden 
upon a litter of one-day old kittens which had 
been drowned and flung there. 

The houses all round this sinister spot had 
apparently at one time, though many years ago, 
been buildings of some substance and importance. 
Now they wore an indescribable aspect of blind- 
ness and misery. There was hardly a whole 
window in any of the houses. The broken panes 
were stopped with dirty rags or plastered with 
newspaper. The doors of the houses stood open, 
and upon the steps swarms of children — dirty, 
pale, pallid, and hopeless — squirmed like larvae. A 
drunken old woman, her small and ape-like face 
caked and encrusted with dirt, was reeling from 
one side of the square to another, singing a hideous 
song in a cracked gin-ridden voice, which shivered 
up into the cold, dank air in a forlorn and bestial 
mockery of music. 

“What is this?'’ Mary said, turning round to 
the police inspector by her side. 

“This, miss," said the bearded man grimly, 

‘ ‘ is called Taverner’s Rents. Every room in these 
houses is occupied by a family; some rooms are 
occupied by two families. The people that live 
here are the poorest of the poor. The boys that 
sell newspapers, the little shoeless boys and girls 
who hawk the cheaper kinds of flowers about the 
streets, the cab-runners, the people who come 
out at night and pick over the dust-bins for food, 
those are the people that live here, miss. And 


The Discovery 129 

there ’s a fairly active criminal population as 
well. 

Mary shuddered. The inspector noticed her 
involuntary shrinking. 

“Miss,” he said, “you have only seen a little 
of it yet. Wait until I take you inside some of 
these places, then you will see what life in London 
can be like.” 

The clergyman, Mr. Conrad, broke in. 

“You have come. Miss Marriott,” he said, 
‘ ‘ now to the home of the utterly degraded and the 
utterly lost. Nothing I or anybody else can say 
or do is possible to redeem this generation. Their 
brains have almost gone, through filth and 
starvation. They live more terribly than any 
animal lives. Their lives are too feeble and too 
awful, either for description or for betterment. 
It is, indeed, difficult for one who, as myself, be- 
lieves most thoroughly in the fact that each one 
of us has an immortal soul, that each one of us 
in the next world will start again, according to 
what we have done in this, to realise that the 
poor creatures whom you have seen now are 
human. Come!” 

It was almost with the slowness and solemnity 
of a funeral procession that the party passed up 
the broken steps of one of the houses and entered 
what had once, in happier bygone days, been 
the hall of a mansion of some substance and 
fair-seeming. 

The broken stairs stretched up above. The 


130 


The Socialist 


banisters which guarded them had long since 
been broken and pulled away. The doors all 
round were almost falling from their hinges. 

“Come in here, gentlemen,'’ said the sanitary 
inspector of the London County Council, pushing 
a door open with his foot as he did so. 

They all followed into a large front room. 

A slight fire was burning in a broken grate, and 
by it, upon a stool, sat an immensely fat woman 
of middle-age. Her hair was extremely scanty 
and caught up at the back of her head in a knot 
hardly bigger than a Tangerine orange. Through 
the thin dust-coloured threads the dirty pink 
scalp showed in patches. The face was inor- 
dinately large, bloated, and of a waxen yellow. 
The eyes were little gimlet holes. The mouth, 
with its thick lips of pale purple, smiled a horrid 
toothless smile as they came in. 

All round the walls of the room were things 
which had once been mattresses, but from 
which damp straw was bursting in every di- 
rection. These mattresses were black, sodden, 
and filthy, and upon them — covered, or hardly 
covered as the case might be, with scraps of 
old quilt or discarded clothing — ^lay young chil- 
dren of from one year to eighteen months old. 
These little mites were almost motionless. 
Their heads seemed to be extraordinarily large, 
their unknowing, unseeing eyes blazed in their 
faces. 

The fat woman, suffering from dropsy, rose 


The Discovery 13 r 

from her seat and curtsied as she saw the sanitary 
inspector and his colleagues. 

“It is all right, gentlemen,” she said in a wee, 
fawning voice. “There ’s food on the fire for the 
little dearies, and they ’re going to have their 
meal, bless ’em, as soon as it ’s boiled up. ” 

She pointed to an iron pot full of something 
that looked like oatmeal which was simmering 
upon the few coals. 

“That ’s all right, Mary,” the County Council 
inspector said in a rough but genial voice. “We 
have n’t come to make any trouble to-day. We 
know you do your best. It is not your fault.” 

“Thank you, sir,” the woman answered, sub- 
siding heavily once more upon her stool. “I 
have never done away with any children yet, and 
I am glad you know it. I ’ve never been up 
before any beak yet, and I does my best. They 
comes to me when they ’ve got the insurances on 
the kids, and I ses, ‘No,’ I ses, ‘you take ’em 
where you know wot you wants will be done. 
You won’t have far to go,’ I ses, and so they 
takes ’em away. ‘My bizness, ’ I ses, ‘is open and 
aboveboard. ’ I looks arter the kids for a penny 
a day, and I gives ’m back to their mothers when 
they comes ’ome, feeding them meanwhile as 
well as I can.” 

Mary was standing horror-struck in the middle 
of the room. She turned to Inspector Brown. 

“Oh,” she said, “how awful! How terrible! 
How utterly awful!” 


132 The Socialist 

The inspector looked down at her with grave 
face. 

“You may well say so, miss,’' he answered. 
“I am a married man myself, and it goes to my 
heart. But you must know that all this woman 
says is absolutely true. She is dying of dropsy, 
and she looks after these children for their mothers 
while they are at the match factories in Bethnal 
Green or making shirts in some Jew sweater’s 
den. She is not what you may call a ‘baby- 
farmer.’ She is not one of those women who 
make a profession of killing children by starvation 
and cold in order that their parents may get the 
insurance money. As she goes, this woman is 
honest. ” 

“But look, look!” Mary answered, pointing 
with quivering finger to the swarming things upon 
the mattresses. 

“I know,” the inspector answered, “but, 
miss, there are worse things than this that you 
could see in the neighbourhood. ” 

Suddenly Mary’s blood, which had been cooled 
and chilled by the awful spectacle, rose to boiling 
point in a single second. She felt sick, she said, 
wheeling round and turning to Fabian Rose — she 
felt sick that all these terrible things should be. 
“Why should such things be allowed?” 

“My dear,” Rose answered very gravely, “it 
is the fault of our modern system. It is the 
fault of capitalism. This is one of the reasons 
why we are Socialists.” 


133 


The Discovery 

“Then,’* Mary said, her eyes flashing, her 
breast heaving, “then, Mr. Rose, I am a Socialist, 
too — from this day, from this hour.” 

As she spoke she did not see that Aubrey 
Flood, the actor-manager, was regarding her with 
a keen, intense scrutiny. He watched her every 
movement. He listened to every inflection of 
her voice, and then — even in that den of horror — 
he turned aside and smiled quietly to himself. 

“Yes,” he thought, “Fabian was right. Here, 
indeed, is the one woman who shall make our 
play a thing which shall beat at the doors of 
London like a gong. ” 

Inspector Brown spoke to Mary in his calm 
official voice. 

“Now, what should you think, miss,” he said, 
“this woman — Mrs. Church' — pays weekly for 
this room?” 

“Pays?” Mary answered. “Pays? Does she 
pay for such a room as this?” 

The fat woman upon the stool answered in a 
heavy, thick, watery voice: “Pye, miss? I pye 
eight shillings a week for this ere room.” 

Mary started ; she could not understand it. 

“What?” she said with a little stamp of her 
foot upon the ground. 

“It is perfectly true, miss, ” the County Council 
inspector interposed. “The rents of these places 
— ^these single rooms- — are extremely high.” 

“Then why do they pay them?” Mary asked. 

“Because, miss,” the inspector answered, “if 


134 


The Socialist 


they did n’t they would have nowhere to go at all, 
except to the workhouse. You see, people of this 
sort cannot move from where they are. They 
are as much tied to places of this sort as a prisoner 
in gaol is confined in his cell. It is either this 
or the streets.” 

“But for all that money,” Mary said, “surely 
they could give them a decent place to live in?” 

“We are doing all we can, miss, on the County 
Council, of course,” the man replied, “and the 
workmen’s dwellings which are springing up all 
over London are, indeed, a great improvement, 
but they are taken up at once by the hard-working 
artisan class, in more or less regular employment. 
It would be impossible to let any of the County 
Council tenements to a woman like this. Her 
income is so precarious, and there are others far 
more thrifty and deserving who must have first 
choice. ” 

“Who is the landlord?” Mary asked. She 
was standing next to the dropsical woman by the 
fireside as she spoke. 

“Oh, missie”' — the woman answered her ques- 
tion — “the ’ead -landlord is Colonel Simpson at 
the big estyte orfiice in Oxford Street, but, of 
course, we don’t never see ’im. The collectors 
comes raund week by week and we pyes them. 
If we wants anythink then we arsts them, and they 
ses they ’ll mention it at ’eadquarters, but, of 
course, nuthink does get done. I don’t suppose 
Colonel Simpson ever ’ears of nuthink.” 


135 


The Discovery 

‘'It is perfectly true, miss,” said the inspector. 
“It is only when we absolutely prosecute the 
estate agency for some flagrant breach of sanitary 
regulations that anything can be done in houses 
like this, and even then the lawyers in their em- 
ploy are so conversant with all the recent enact- 
ments, and so shrewd in the science of evading 
them, that practically we can do nothing at 
all. ” 

When Mary turned to Fabian Rose he was 
standing side by side with the Reverend Peter 
Conrad. 

Both men were looking at her gravely and a 
little curiously. 

“Who is this Colonel Simpson?” she asked. 
“Could not he be exposed in the Press? Could 
not he be held up to execration? Could not you, 
Mr. Goodrich,” she said, flashing upon the editor, 
who had hitherto remained in the background 
and said no word, “could not you tell the world 
of the wickedness of this Colonel Simpson?” 

The little man with the straw-coloured mous- 
tache and the keen eyes smiled. 

“Miss Marriott,” he said, “you realise very 
little as yet. You do not know what the forces 
of capitalism and monopoly mean. Day by day 
we are driving our chisels into the basis of the 
structure, and some day it will begin to totter; 
some day, again, it will fall, but not yet, not yet. 
Mr. Simpson is a mere nobody. He is a machine. 
His object in life is to get as much money as he 


136 


The Socialist 


can out of the vast properties which he controls 
for another. He is an agent, nothing more. 

'‘Then who does this really belong to? Who is 
really responsible?’' Mary asked. 

Fabian Rose looked at her very meaningly. 

“Once more,” he said, “I will pronounce that 
ill-omened name- — ^the Duke of Paddington.” 

“Let us go away,” Mr. Conrad said suddenly. 
He noticed that Mary’s face was very pale, and 
that she was swaying a little. 

They went out into the hall and stood 
there for a moment undecided as to what to 
do. 

Mary seemed about to faint. 

Suddenly from the back of the hall, steps were 
heard coming towards them, and in a moment 
more the face of a clean-shaven man appeared. 
He was mounting from the stairs that led down 
into what had once been the kitchens or cellars 
of the old house. 

Just half of his body was visible, when he 
stopped suddenly, as if turned to stone. 

As he did so the bearded Inspector Brown 
stepped quickly forward and caught him by the 
shoulder. 

“Ah, it is you, is it?” he said. “Come up and 
let us have a look at you.” 

The man’s face grew absolutely white, then, 
with a sudden eel-like movement, he twisted 
away from under the inspector’s hand and van- 
ished down the stairs. 


The Discovery 137 

In a flash the inspector and his companion 
were after him. 

“Come on!” they shouted to the others, “come 
on, we shall want you!” 

Rose and Conrad dashed after them. Mary 
could hear them stumbling down the stairs, and 
then a confused noise of shouting as if from the 
bowels of the earth. 

She was left alone, standing there with Mr. 
Goodrick, when she suddenly became aware that 
the staircase leading to the upper part of the 
house had become crowded with noiseless figures, 
looking down upon what was toward with motion- 
less, eager faces. 

“What shall we do?” Mary said. “What does 
it all mean?” 

“I am sure I don’t know,” Goodrick answered, 
“but if you are not afraid, don’t you think we 
had better follow our friends? I suppose the 
inspector is after some thief or criminal whom 
he has just recognised.” 

“I am not afraid,” Mary said. 

“Come along, then,” he answered, and to- 
gether they went to the end of the hall and stum- 
bled down some greasy steps. 

A light was at the bottom, red light through 
an open door, and they turned into a sort of 
kitchen. 

There was nobody there, but one man who 
crouched in a corner and a fat, elderly Jewish 
woman, whose mouth dropped in fear, and whose 


138 The Socialist 

eyes were set and fixed in terror, like the eyes of 
a doll. 

Through an open door in a corner of the kitchen 
beyond there came strange sounds — oaths, curses 
— sounds which seemed even farther away than 
the door suggested that they were. 

The sounds seemed to rise up from the very 
bowels of the earth, from some deeper inferno 
even than this. 

Then Mary, for the first time, began to be in real 
terror. She clung to the imperturbable little editor. 

“Oh, what is it?” she cried. “What does it 
all mean?” 

The Jewess turned round with an almost crouch- 
ing attitude and peered fearfully into the dimly lit 
gloom through the doorway. Then, quite sud- 
denly, without any warning, she fell back against 
the wall of the kitchen and began to shriek and 
wail like a lost soul. As she did so, and through 
her piercing shrieks, Mary heard the distant 
noises were becoming louder and louder. 

She reeled in the hot and filthy air of this 
dreadful place and pressed her hand against the 
wall for support. Even as she did so she saw the 
two police inspectors stagger into the room, 
bearing a burden between them, the burden, 
as it seemed, of a dead man. 

Then ever3rthing began to sway, the place was 
filled with a louder and louder noise, the whole 
room grew fuller and fuller of people, and Mary 
Marriott fainted dead away. 


CHAPTER XII 


AT THE bishop’s TOWN HOUSE 

T he library was a noble one for a London 
house. The late sun of the summer after- 
noon in town poured into the place and touched 
all the golden and crimson-laden shelves in 
glory. From floor to roof the great tomes winked 
and glittered in the light. 

Here the sun fell upon the glazed-fronted 
cabinets, which held the priceless first editions 
of modern authors. There it illuminated those 
cabinets which confined and guarded the old 
black-letter editions of the bishop’s famous 
collection of medieval missals. It was a dignified 
home of lettered culture and ease. 

Lord Camborne was sitting in a great armchair 
of green leather. In his own house he smoked 
a pipe, and a well-seasoned briar was gripped in 
his left hand as he leaned forward and looked 
at his son. On the opposite side of the glowing 
fireplace, on each side of which stood pots of 
great Osmunda ferns, which glistened in the fire- 
light as if they had been cunningly japanned, 
Lord Hayle was sitting. His face was quite 
white, his attitude one of strained attention, as 
139 


140 The Socialist 

he listened to the wordy and didactic utterances 
of the earl. 

“I don’t know what to make of it, my dear 
Gerald,” the bishop said. “Upon my soul, I 
don’t know what to make of it! Such a thing 
has never happened before in all my experience. 
Indeed, I don’t suppose that such an occurrence 
has ever been known.” 

“You are quite right, father,” Lord Hayle 
replied; “but that is not the question. The 
question is: Where is my poor friend? Where is 
John?” 

The bishop threw out two shapely hands with 
a curious gesture of indecision and bewilderment. 
“Gerald,” he said, “if I could answer that ques- 
tion I should satisfy the press of Europe and put 
society at rest.” 

“But it is the most extraordinary thing, 
father,” Lord Hayle said. “Here is John in- 
volved in this terrible railway accident. As far 
as we know — as far as we can know, indeed — 
he was rescued from the debris of the broken 
carriage perfectly unhurt. That young Doctor 
Jenkins was perfectly certain that the man whom 
he rescued and told to lie down for half an hour, 
to avoid the nervous effects of the shock, must 
have been the Duke of Paddington. He has 
assured me, he has assured Colonel Simpson, he 
has assured everybody in short that it was cer- 
tainly the duke! In three-quarters of an hour 
he goes back to find his patient, and, meanwhile 


At the Bishop’s Town House 141 

meeting Colonel Simpson, who had come down 
the line in frightful anxiety about the duke, there 
— ^where John had been — ^was nobody at all! Do 
you suppose that, as the Pall Mall Gazette has 
hinted, that John was temporarily deranged by 
the shock and walked away and lost himself? 
There seems to be no other explanation.’’ 

“But that is impossible,” the bishop replied. 
“ If he had done so would he not have been found 
in an hour or two?” 

“I suppose he would,” Lord Hayle answered. 
“I suppose he would, father.” 

“Then, all I can say,” the bishop said, with an 
air of finality, “all I can say is that the thing is 
as black and mysterious as an5rthing I have ever 
known in the whole course of my experience. 
There we were, you and myself and your sister, 
lunching at Paul’s with the duke, when the news 
came of the outrage in Piccadilly. The duke 
went up to town by the six o’clock train. The 
accident occurred, and now the whole of society 
is trembling in suspense to know what has hap- 
pened to your friend. I cannot tell you, Gerald, 
how it has distressed me; and,” the bishop 
continued, with a slight hesitation in his voice, 
“your sister also is very much upset.” 

“Well, naturally, Connie would be,” Lord 
Hayle returned. “But think what it must be 
to me, father! It is worse for me than for any- 
body. You have met the duke, Connie has met 
him; but I have been his intimate friend for the 


142 


The Socialist 


whole of the time we have been up at Oxford 
together, and I am at a loose end, I am simply 
heart-broken.’' 

“My dear Gerald, ” said the splendid old gentle- 
man from the armchair, with some unctiousness, 
“God ordains these things, these trials, for all 
of us; but be sure that, in His own good time, 
all will come right. We must be patient and 
trust in the Divine Will. ” 

The young man looked at his father with a 
curious expression upon his face. He was very 
fond of his distinguished parent, and had a 
reverence for his abilities, but somehow or other 
at that moment the bishop’s adjuration did not 
seem to ring quite true. Youth is often intolerant 
of the pious complacency of late middle-age! 

It was about seven o’clock. At nine o’clock 
there was a small dinner party. The Home 
Secretary was to be there. 

“I wonder,” Lord Hayle said, at length, “if 
Sir Anthony will have any news?” 

“I am sure I hope so,” the bishop answered. 
“I saw him this morning in Whitehall, and he 
told me that everything that could possibly be 
done was being done. The whole of Scotland 
Yard, in fact, is bending its attention to the dis- 
covery of the whereabouts of your friend. ” 

“I wish,” Lord Hayle returned grimly, “I 
wish we could have a Johnnie like Sherlock 
Holmes on John’s trek. There don’t seem to be 
any of that sort of people outside the magazines.” 


At the Bishop’s Town House 143 

At that moment the door of the library opened, 
and the butler came in. He carried a pile of 
evening papers upon a tray. 

“These are the latest editions, my lord,’’ he 
said, bringing them up to the bishop. 

The father and son took the papers and opened 
them hurriedly. 

Huge head-lines greeted their eyes. “Where 
is the duke?” “Has the duke disappeared with 
intention?” “Last news of the missing duke.” 
“Rumours that the Duke of Paddington has 
taken a berth on the Lucania under the name 
of John Smith.” “If the duke does not return, 
what will this mean to the ground-rents of Lon- 
don?” and so forth, and so forth, and so forth. 

The bishop put down the papers with a weary 
sigh. 

“The same thing,” he said, “my dear Gerald, 
the same sort of thing. ” 

Lord Hayle looked up at his father. 

“Yes, ” he answered, “what fools these journal- 
ists are!” 

“No, my dear boy, they are not fools. When 
they have anything to write about, they write 
about it rather well. When they haven’t, of 
course they must manufacture.” 

“A confounded swindle, I call it!” said Lord 
Hayle. 

The bishop did not answer. He remembered 
how much he owed to the press of London and 
the provinces for his advancement in the Church. 


144 


The Socialist 


“Well,’’ Lord Hayle said, “I shall go up-stairs, 
father, to my own room and have a tub and a 
pipe, and think the whole thing over. I suppose 
we may hear something from Sir Anthony at 
dinner to-night.” 

“My dear boy,” the bishop replied, “I’m sure 
I hope so. ” 

Lord Hayle had already risen from his seat, and 
was walking towards the door of the library 
when the butler entered once more. He bore a 
silver salver, upon which was a card, and went 
straight up to Lord Camborne. 

“My lord,” he said, “there is a gentleman 
waiting in the morning-room. He desires to see 
you upon a most important matter. I told the 
gentleman that your lordship was probably 
engaged, but he would not be denied.” 

“I cannot see anybody,” the bishop replied, 
rather irritably. ‘ ‘Take the card to the chaplain. ’ ’ 

“I beg your lordship’s pardon,” said the but- 
ler, “but I think this is a gentleman whom your 
lordship would wish to see. ” 

The bishop pulled out his single eye-glass — he 
was the only prelate upon the bench who wore 
one — and looked at the card upon the tray. 

“Good gracious!” he said, with a sudden sharp- 
ness in his voice. “This fellow! How dare ” 

“Who has come to see you? ” Lord Hayle asked. 

The bishop’s face was flushed. There was in- 
dignation in his voice, contempt in his eyes, and 
angry irritation in his pose. 


At the Bishop’s Town House 145 

“Look here, Gerald!” he said, taking the card 
and holding it out to his son in answer. “Who 
do you suppose has come to see me? Look!” 

Lord Hayle took up the card. 

“By Jove!” he said. “James Fabian Rose! 
Why, that ’s the great Socialist Johnny, is n’t it, 
father? The man who writes plays and lectures, 
and is on the County Council and all that. I 
think we had him down at Oxford once, and I 
am not sure that we did not drive him out of the 
town.” 

“That is the man,” the bishop answered; “one 
of the most brilliant intellects and unscrupulous 
characters in London to-day. It is not too much 
to say, Gerald, that this man is a perfect danger 
and menace to society, and to our — our order. ” 

“Then what has he come to see you for, father?” 

“Goodness only knows!” said the bishop. “I 
certainly shall not see him. ” 

The butler was an old and privileged family 
servant. He had said nothing while this dia- 
logue was in progress. Now he turned to his 
master. 

“If you will allow me to say so, my lord,” he 
said, “I think the gentleman should be seen. I 
don’t think that it is an ordinary visit at all. It 
bears no indication of being an ordinary visit at 
all. ” 

The bishop snapped his fingers once or twice. 

“Oh, well, Parker,” he said, “show him in, 
show him in ; but explain that I have only three 


146 


The Socialist 


minutes, and that I am very busy. Gerald, you 
might as well wait. It might be interesting for 
you to see this creature.’’ 

In half a minute the butler opened the door 
and showed in the man with the face as white 
as linen, the mustard-coloured beard and mous- 
tache, and the keen lamp-like eyes. 

Rose was dressed in his usual lounge suit, cut 
with about as much regard to convention as a 
ham sandwich. His tall figure bent forwards in 
eagerness, and he was certainly a disreputable 
note in this stronghold of aristocracy. Yet, 
nevertheless, his personality blazed out in the 
room as if some one had lit a Roman candle in 
the library. 

The bishop rose, stately, portly, splendid. 

“Mr. Rose,” he said, “to what do I owe the 
pleasure of your visit? I am rather pressed for 
time.” 

“Something very important, indeed, my lord,” 
the Socialist answered, in quick, incisive accents. 
“I should not have intruded upon you unless I 
had something most special to say.” 

“I understand that, Mr. Rose,” the bishop 
replied, though the courteous smile with which 
he said it robbed his remark of something of its 
sting. “You and I, Mr. Rose, represent two 
quite different points of view, do we not?” 

“I suppose we do,” said the great Socialist, 
with a sudden vigour and amusement in his eyes ; 
“but that is not what I have come here for to- 


At the Bishop’s Town House 147 

night. May I ask, my lord,” he said, looking 
towards Lord Camborne’s son, “may I ask if 
this is Lord Hayle?” 

“That is my name, Mr. Rose,” the young man 
replied, rather startled at the sudden question. 

“Oh, thank you,” Rose said. “I have come 
here specially to see you to-night. ” 

There was a moment’s pause. 

' “Your business, Mr. Rose?” said the bishop 
once more. 

“Is this,” Rose rejoined. “The Duke of Pad- 
dington has sent me with a very special message 
to his friend. Lord Hayle. If Lord Hayle was 
not in London, his grace asked me to see Lord 
Camborne. ” 

The bishop started violently. “My dear Mr. 
Rose, ” he said, in a deep voice, “what is all this? 
What is all this? The Duke of Paddington! Do 
you mean to say ” 

“The Duke of Paddington, my lord,” Rose 
answered, a subtle mockery becoming somewhat 
apparent in his voice, “the Duke of Paddington 
has been discovered!” 

“Good Lord!” Lord Hayle shouted out sud- 
denly, in the high-pitched voice of almost uncon- 
trollable excitement. “You have found dear old 
John! Where is John, Mr. Rose?” 

There was something so spontaneous and sin- 
cere in the young man’s voice that the Socialist 
turned with a certain brightness and pleasure to 
the young man. 


148 


The Socialist 


“Oh, sir!’' he said, “the duke is lying at my 
house in Westminster. He has been kidnapped 
by criminal ruffians, and, I am sorry to say, has 
been tortured in order that large sums of money 
might be extorted from him. The doctors are 
with him now, and no serious injury has been 
done, but he is especially anxious to see you. I 
have a cab waiting, if you care to come at once. ” 
“I ’ll have my coat on in a moment,” Lord 
Hayle replied, and left the room. 

The bishop went up to James Fabian Rose. 
“Sir,” he said, “our difference of opinion in 
social economics and political affairs shall not 
prevent me from gripping you very heartily by 
the hand.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


NEW friends: new ideas 

I T was three days after the strange and dramatic 
rescue of the Duke of Paddington, and he lay 
in a bright, cheerful bedroom in James Fabian 
Rose’s house in Westminster. Providence had 
guided Rose and his companions to the under- 
ground cellar in the nick of time. The relentless 
ruffians who had captured the duke had been 
as good as their word. They had treated him 
with indescribable ferocity, though into the details 
of the horrors in the foundation of the old house 
it is not necessary to go. 

When the police inspectors had brought him up 
from the deepest hole of all, he was unconscious, 
and had immediately been taken away to Rose’s 
own house in a horse ambulance which had been 
summoned from the police headquarters of the 
district. 

The actual discovery had been very simple. 
Directly the Inspector of Police recognised the 
man known as “Sidney,” he had rushed after 
him, followed by the others. As it happened, 
for some time the police had been very anxious to 
discover the exact whereabouts of this particular 
ex-convict, to track him to his lair. It was 


149 


The Socialist 


150 

obvious that when the man turned and bolted 
down the stairs there was something he wished 
to conceal, and, though there was no actual 
charge against him at the moment, the policeman 
had experience enough to know that something 
illegal was afoot. They had dashed into the 
kitchen to find it tenanted only by the old Jewish 
woman, but the door leading into the smaller 
kitchen was open, and Sidney was leaning over 
the trap-door in the floor pulling up another 
member of the gang who had been down in the 
pit with the victim. 

The man’s design had obviously been to get 
his comrade up, close the trap-door, and push 
the tub over it before the policemen could enter 
the kitchen. In all probability there would then 
have been no discovery at all, though the ruffian 
himself was by no means sure that the party were 
not in some way or other upon the track of the 
actual offence he had committed in kidnapping the 
duke. His guilty conscience had betrayed him. 

When the scoundrel had been caught and 
handcuffed, and the duke had been discovered 
and carried up into the kitchen the man relapsed 
into a sullen silence. He had gathered at once 
from the remarks made by his captors that they 
were quite unaware of the identity of the prisoner. 
It did not, in fact, occur to any of the party, even 
to the police, to connect this insensible figure, 
half-clothed — the face covered with grime and 
dirt — with the missing peer. 


New Friends : New Ideas 15 1 

‘‘We will get the poor fellow off to the hospital 
at once, sir,” Inspector Green had said to Rose. 
“These devils have been working some horrible 
thing upon him. I expect he is one of their pals 
who has given them away. I have seen some 
black things, but this is about as bad as any of 
them. I should not wonder” — he turned round 
with his face like a flint, and a voice that cut like 
a whip — “I should not wonder if this was a 
swinging job for you, Sidney O’Connor!” 

“He certainly shall not go to the hospital,” 
said Rose. “Not that they won’t look after him 
thoroughly there ; but I could not allow anybody 
whom I discovered myself in such a plight as this 
to do so. He must go to my house, and my wife 
and Miss Marriott will nurse him. ” 

“Well, sir,” said the officer, “it is only a very 
little distance farther to your house from here 
than to Charing Cross Hospital, and I will send 
the ambulance there if you really wish it. It ’s 
very kind of you, Mr. Rose.” 

“Certainly I do,” Rose answered. “It is a 
duty, of course. ” 

“And I,” said Mary Marriott, “will drive back 
at once if a cab can be found for me, to tell Mrs. 
Rose that they are bringing this poor man.” 

“That will be very kind of you. Miss Marriott, ” 
Rose answered. “I am sorry that our expedition 
has come to so unpleasant and dramatic an end, 
for I do not suppose any of us would care to go 
on now?” 


152 


The Socialist 


“No, indeed, '' said both the clergyman and the 
journalist in answer, and in a few minutes Mary’s 
first experience of the dark under-currents of 
London life was at an end. 

When the duke was comfortably installed in 
Rose’s house the doctor pronounced him suffer- 
ing from shocks and extreme weakness. 

“He will be all right in a few days,” he said. 
“He must now have absolute rest and nourish- 
ment. The actual harm inflicted upon him by 
the scoundrels with whom he was found is very 
slight. There are the merest superficial burns, 
and the cuts are trivial. It is the weakness and 
shock that are the most serious. The young 
man has a splendid constitution. He ’s as strong 
as an ox. ” 

The doctor went away, leaving minute direc- 
tions for the treatment of the patient. 

The duke was in a semi-conscious condition. 
He realised dimly that he was out of the horrible 
place where he had lain for, so it seemed to him, 
an eternity. He knew that, somehow or other, 
he had been rescued, that he was now lying in a 
comfortable bed. A new life seemed slowly 
coming back into his veins as the meat jelly dis- 
solved in his mouth. The horror was ended at 
last ! 

He had fallen at length into a deep slumber. 

The party assembled in the drawing-room, 
discussing the extraordinary events of the morning, 
and Mrs. Rose was told every detail. The police 


New Friends : New Ideas 153 


and the County Council inspector were not there, 
but the chief inspector had promised to report 
later as to an3rthing that should be learned of the 
truth of the mystery. 

“Well, ” said Mr. Goodrick, with a little chuckle, 
“I went out this morning because I wanted to 
watch Miss Marriott, and because I am interested 
in the great experiment we are making with her. 
I had seen all that sort of thing before I knew 
Miss Marriott; in fact, I began my journalistic 
career by writing of such places as we have been 
among ; but I never expected that I was going to 
get a journalistic scoop. This will make a fine 
column in to-morrow’s paper. The junior mem- 
bers of my staff will be jealous of their editor- 
in-chief going out and bringing in copy! They 
will regard it as an infringement of their rights!” 
He chuckled once more, and rubbed his hands 
together, all the true pressman’s delight at ex- 
clusive news glowing in his eyes. 

“Yes,” he went on, “it will be quite a big 
thing, especially as you were present. Rose' — 
a real sensation! The Wire will solve the mystery 
that is agitating the mind of the public in a most 
startling fashion!” 

A maid came into the room. “If you please, 
sir,” she said to Rose, “Inspector Green is here, 
and wishes to see you immediately on a matter 
of great importance.” 

“Show him up, Annie,” said the Socialist, and 
in a second or two more the inspector burst into 


154 


The Socialist 


the room, his usual calm and imperturbable 
manner strangely altered. He seemed to be 
labouring under some deep emotion. 

“What is it, inspector?” Rose said, and in- 
stinctively all the people in the room rose up. 

“The man, ” the inspector gasped, “the man we 
found in the cellar, ladies and gentlemen — it is — 
it is his Grace the Duke of Paddington himself!” 

There was a dead silence. The faces of every 
one went pale with excitement. 

“The Duke of Paddington?” Rose said in a 
startled and incredulous voice. 

“His Grace himself, sir. As you know, his 
Grace’s disappearance has been agitating the whole 
of Europe for the last day or two. It seems what 
happened was this. The duke was lying down 
on the side of the line after the railway accident. 
He was almost uninjured, but the doctor who 
rescued him ordered him to rest for half an hour. 
The gang of men in the slum hard by, attracted 
by the accident in the fog and the possibility of 
plunder, had come through a doorway in the wall 
which leads upon the line. They rifled the duke’s 
pockets, and from their contents found out who 
he was. 

“The leader of the gang, Sidney O’Connor, is 
one of the most dangerous and desperate criminals 
in the country, and, moreover, a man of great 
daring and resource. He it was who thought 
it would be an infinitely better stroke of business 
if he could kidnap the duke and hold him to 


New Friends : New Ideas 155 

ransom. Owing to the fog and the proximity 
of their den — it is one of the duke’s own houses, 
by the way, you will remember — ^the kidnapping 
was easily affected, the duke being too weak and 
stunned by the accident to offer any resistance. 
It is by the mercy of Providence that we found 
him when we did. The old Jewish woman who 
keeps the den has confessed everything. How is 
his Grace, Mr. Rose?” 

“Much better,” said Mrs. Rose, “much better, 
inspector. The doctor has been here, and says 
he will be all right in a few days. He is suffer- 
ing from extreme weakness and shock. He is now 
sleeping peacefully, and a nurse from the West- 
minster Hospital is with him.” 

Mr. Goodrich went up to the inspector. “Now 
look here, inspector,” he said, “promise me one 
thing, that neither you nor your companions will 
give any of the details of this affair to the press. 
I shall see that it is well worth your while, all of 
you, to be silent until to-morrow morning. Can 
you answer for your colleague and the plain- 
clothes man who was with us?” 

“Certainly I can, Mr. Goodrich,” the inspector 
answered. 

“Well, it will be worth five pounds each to 
them. And what about the County Council 
inspector?” 

“He has gone back to Spring Gardens now, sir, ” 
Green replied, “but I can easily send a message up 
to him from Scotland Yard to that effect.” 


The Socialist 


156 

“I shall be most obliged if you will do so,” said 
Mr. Goodrich, and then once more he gave a loud 
chuckle of triumph and rubbed his hands to- 
gether. “Sensation!” he said in an ecstasy, 
“why, the Wire will have one of the biggest 
scoops of recent years to-morrow. Oh, what 
luck! Oh, what splendid luck! No other paper 
will have anything except the mere statement of 
the fact that the duke has been discovered under 
mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Rose, I must 
say good-bye; I must hurry off. Don’t forget, 
inspector! Absolute secrecy!” 

He made a comprehensive bow, which included 
all of them, patted Fabian genially upon the 
back, and rushed away. 

“What do you suppose we had better do, 
inspector?” Rose asked. 

“Well, sir, I don’t quite know what there is to 
be done, except, perhaps, to telegraph to the 
head of the young gentleman’s college at Oxford, 
and to Colonel Simpson, his agent. You see, 
the duke has no very near relatives, though he is 
connected with half the peerage. I shall take 
care, also, that the news is at once conveyed to 
Buckingham Palace. His Majesty has been most 
anxious during the last day or two, and inquiries 
are constantly reaching us. For the rest, I 
think it will be better that you should wait until 
his Grace regains consciousness and can say what 
he would like to be done. ” 

The inspector had disappeared, and Rose, his 


New Friends : New Ideas 


157 


wife, Mary, and Mr. Conrad, were left alone, 
looking at each other in amazement. Then 
suddenly Rose sat down and burst into laughter. 
The old elfin, mocking expression had returned 
to his face. The keen eyes twinkled with sardonic 
humour, the mustard-coloured beard and mous- 
tache wagged up and down, as the great man 
leant back in an ecstasy of mirth. 

“All ’s well that ends well,” he said at length, 
spluttering out his words. “Good heavens! what 
a marvellous day it has been! We go to the Duke 
of Paddington’s property, so that Miss Marriott 
can get ideas for the part of the heroine in the 
play which is to draw all England to the iniquity 
of great landlords like the duke, who do nothing, 
and allow their agents to draw rents for rat-holes. 
Then we find the duke himself trussed up like a 
chicken in a gloomy cellar of one of his own filthy 
properties ! What extraordinary tricks Fate does 
play sometimes! Who would have thought that 
such a thing could possibly happen? And, what 
is better still — ^what is more quaintly humorous 
than ever — here is the young gentleman with his 
hundred and fifty thousand a year and his great 
name and title, here ! sleeping in my best bedroom 
— in the very headquarters of the party which 
is labouring to destroy monopolies such as his. 
I wonder what he will say when he wakes up and 
finds out where he is, poor fellow!” 

“If he is a gentleman, as I suppose he is, ” said 
Mrs. Rose, “he will say ‘Thank you’ — not once. 


158 


The Socialist 


but several times, because, you know, Fabian 
dear, not only did you save his life, in the first 
instance by chance, but you brought him here 
instead of sending him to a hospital when you 
had no idea who he was/' 

‘‘And that," Mary broke in, “is what I call 
practical socialism. Don’t you allow, Mr. Rose, 
that the duke is a brother?" 

“Oh, yes," the Socialist replied, “but no more 
and no less a brother because of his dukedom." 

There was a tap at the door. The nurse had 
sent down a message that the gentleman upstairs 
was awake, had learned where he was, and would 
like to see Mr. Rose. 

This was what had occurred. For three days 
the duke had lain in bed, gradually growing 
stronger. Lord Hayle had visited him con- 
stantly, and when he was well enough to be 
moved he was to go straight to the Camborne’s 
house in Grosvenor Street. 

The sun poured into the bedroom — a cold, 
wintry sun, but still grateful enough after the 
fog and gloom of the last week. A fire crackled 
upon the hearth, and the duke lay propped up 
with pillows, smoking a cigarette. On a chair 
at the side of the bed sat Fabian Rose, and on a 
chair on the other side was Mr. Conrad, the 
clergyman. An animated conversation was in 
progress. 

For the first time in his life the duke had met 


New Friends ; New Ideas 159 

types to which he was utterly unaccustomed. 
He had known of Fabian Rose, of course; there 
was no one in England who did not know the 
great Socialist’s name, and few people of the 
upper classes who had not, at some time or other, 
witnessed one of his immensely clever plays. 
But now the duke was finding that all his ideas 
were being rudely upset. They were in a process 
of transition. The man with the white face and 
the mustard-coloured beard, with the lambent 
humour, had captivated him. He felt drawn 
to Rose, though his predominant sensation when 
talking to his host was one of wild amazement, 
and as for the clergyman, the duke liked him also, 
though he was a type that he had never met 
before. 

It was an odd situation indeed. Here was the 
great capitalist captured and cornered by two of 
the most militant Socialists of the day — and 
here — he was rather enjoying it! 

“Well,” he said, “I seem fated nowadays to 
be carried off into the camp of the enemy; but I 
like this captivity better than the first. All the 
same, I cannot in the least agree with you, Mr. 
Conrad, in what you say, that the law of Eng- 
land, as it stands at present, is simply in the 
interests of the classes with property. Poor peo- 
ple have just as much justice, I have always under- 
stood, as any others. ” 

“It is not so,” replied Mr. Conrad, shaking his 
head. “I wish it were. As I see it, as Rose sees 


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The Socialist 


it, as we Socialists see it, the law works wholly 
to protect property and the propertied, and to do 
whatever injustices the propertied people who 
control the State require of it. 

“When a hungry man helps himself to the 
food he cannot pay for, a man in blue introduces 
him to a man on a bench, and the result of the 
interview is that the hungry one is put away and 
locked up for a lengthened time. When the 
people meet to discuss their miseries and to de- 
mand relief men in scarlet as well as in blue beat 
and cut them to death. The law of England, as 
it stands at present, is entirely built up upon what 
John Kenworthy has so aptly described as ‘that 
Devil’s Bible, the Codex Romanorum. ’ Rome 
built up a property system which asserted and 
maintained the rights of the selfish and cunning 
over those whom they cheated and robbed, and 
we have done precisely the same with similar 
results. It is just the same in England to-day 
as it is in Russia, though the English people are 
not able to assert themselves as their brethren in 
Russia are doing. Count Tolstoi has said that in 
both countries — ^in almost all countries, in fact, 
authority is in the hands of men who, like all the 
rest, are ever ready to sacrifice the commonweal if 
their own personal interests are at stake. These 
men encounter no resistance from the oppressed, 
and are wholly subject to the corrupting influence 
of authority itself. And yet we call ourselves a 
Christian nation!” 


New Friends : New Ideas i6i 

‘‘And so we are, Mr. Conrad, ” the duke replied. 
“England is ruled and guided entirely by the 
Christian faith. If it were not so society would 
fall to pieces in a day.” 

“It is not so, believe me, duke, ” the clergyman 
answered; “and if society could but fall to pieces 
in a day, then indeed there would be a glorious 
opportunity to reconstruct it on really Christian 
lines! Jesus left no doubt as to the nature of His 
mission. He pictured Dives, the rich man, 
plunged into torment for nothing else than for 
being rich when another was poor- — not, you will 
observe, only for being rich. He pictures Lazarus, 
who had not anything, poor and afflicted, as 
comforted and consoled. For that those evan- 
gelical nonconformists the Pharisees, derided the 
Great Teacher of mankind. Again, by the force 
of His personality, for it was not the scourge that 
He held in His hands alone, Jesus drove the 
usurers out of their business quarters in the 
Temple and named them thieves. ‘Woe,’ He 
said, ‘to those who lay up treasures upon earth. 
Blessed,’ He said, ‘are the poor!’ It is,” he 
concluded, “to reconstruct real Christianity that 
the Socialists are labouring to-day.” 

The duke did not answer. He lay back upon 
his pillows, thinking deeply. 

“These are very new thoughts to me,” he said, 
“and you must forgive me if I cannot immediately 
assimilate them. ” 

“Quite so,” Fabian Rose broke in, “but per- 


i 62 


The Socialist 


haps some day your Grace will get more light upon 
these subjects. It is impossible for you and us 
to think alike in any particular. Our whole lives 
and environment have been entirely different. 
Some men upon a mountain survey a landscape; 
others see nothing but a map. I agree with Mr. 
Conrad to a certain extent, but he would be the 
very last person to call me an orthodox Christian 
all the same. As one looks round it really does 
often seem that when Christ died the religion of 
Christ died too. Instead of that we have only 
the ‘Christian religion' nowadays. But we must 
not tire you, you must get up all your strength 
to-day, for your removal to Lord Camborne’s 
house to-morrow — for your removal out of our 
lives," he concluded, with an unusual sadness 
in his voice, “for our ways lie very far apart. " 

“If you will allow me, Mr. Rose," the duke 
answered, “our ways will not lie very far apart. 
Thinking differently as we do, looking upon these 
problems through different pairs of spectacles, 
nevertheless it would be a grief to me if I thought 
that we were not to meet sometimes and to remain 
friends. What you have done for me is more 
than I can say, and I should be indeed ungrateful 
if the fact that we were in opposite camps pre- 
vented a hand-grasp now and then." 

“Well, well," Rose answered, “I am sure it is 
very kind of you to say so, and we shall see what 
the future brings forth. At the same time it is 
only fair to tell you what I have not told you 


New Friends : New Ideas 163 


before — that I am organising an active campaign 
against you in the first instance, as a type of the 
class we desire to destroy, and for which we wish 
to substitute another.” 

“Dear me!” said the duke, smiling. “That 
sounds very dreadful, Mr. Rose. Do tell me 
what is going to happen. Are you going to blow 
up some more of my house in Piccadilly?” 

“ Oh, no, ” Rose replied, laughing. “Those are 
not our methods, and although they have not 
found out, I understand, who threw the bomb 
and destroyed the Florentine Vase, I am sure 
it was no member of the Socialistic party, to 
which I belong. We accomplish our ends by 
more peaceful methods, though infinitely stronger. 
No, duke, I will tell you frankly what is on the 
cards. ” 

Mr. Rose paused for a moment, and then in a 
few sentences told his guest exactly, and in detail, 
all his plan for educating society to socialistic 
ideals by means of the theatre. 

“And here,” he concluded with a smile, as 
Mrs. Rose knocked at the door and entered with 
Mary Marriott, who was carrying a bunch of 
chrysanthemums in her hand, “and here is the 
girl who is to be the arch offender against your 
rights! Here is the heroine of the play! The 
artist whose influence shall be more powerful 
and far-reaching than a thousand lectures!” 

The duke smiled. He was glad to see the 
beautiful girl whom he had got to know and 


1 64 The Socialist 

like during the two or three times he had met 
her. 

“Well, he said, “if privilege is to be destroyed 
it could be at no more kindly hands I am sure! 

“I brought you some chrysanthemums, your 
Grace,” Mary said, flushing a little, “a sort of 
peace offering, because Mr. Rose told me yes- 
terday that he was going to tell you all that we 
propose to do. I hope yotir Grace will accept 
them?” 

They left the duke alone after a few minutes 
further chat, and for the rest of the day he saw 
no one but the doctor and a new valet who had 
been engaged for him. 

The flowers which Mary Marriott had given 
him stood upon a table by the bed, and, as he 
regarded their delicate, fantastic beauty, so in- 
stinct with the decorative spirit of the Land of 
the Rising Sun, he thought a good deal of the 
giver. To the duke an actress had hitherto 
always meant some dull wench in a burlesque. 
On one occasion only had he been to a supper 
party given to some of these ornaments of the 
illustrated papers, and he had been so insufferably 
bored that he resolved the experience should be 
his last. He had known vaguely, of course, that 
ladies went on the stage nowadays, but the fact 
had never been brought home to him before 
he met Mary Marriott. How graceful she was! 
As graceful in every movement as any famous 
society beauty. 


New Friends : New Ideas 165 


Her face was very lovely in its way, he thought, 
and though of quite a different type, it was almost 
as lovely as that of Lady Constance Camborne. 
What a pair they woiild make! What a bouquet 
of girls! It would be splendid to see them 
together, the dark girl and the fair. 

He had much to occupy his mind as he lay 
alone. The novel which they had brought him 
lay unheeded upon the counterpane. He had 
stepped into a new world, of that there was no 
doubt at all, and had begun to realise how his 
great possessions and high rank had hitherto 
set him apart and barred him from much that 
was vivid and interesting, pulsating with life. 
He had always been exclusive ; it was in his blood 
to be so, and his training had fostered the in- 
stinct. But he saw now that he would never 
be quite the same again. His curiosity was 
aroused, and his interest in classes of society of 
which he had never thought before. He deter- 
mined to investigate. He would keep friends 
with Fabian Rose and his circle. If they were 
going to write a socialistic play, well, let them. 
It would be amusing to watch it, and, besides, it 
could not hurt him. ^ He would get to know this 
Miss Marriott better, and he would ask her about 
her art, which seemed to be so dominant a pur- 
pose in her life. There were many things that he 
resolved he would do in the future. Then again, 
there was that young Arthur Burnside. The 
duke remembered how, during the afternoon 


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The Socialist 


before the accident, he had talked with Burnside 
in St. Paul’s College, and had been able to give 
him the vacant librarianship at Paddington House, 
which had meant a total change in the young 
man’s prospects. Yes! he would go to Padding- 
ton House one day, when he was staying with 
the Cambornes, and he would see how Burnside 
was getting on, and have a talk with him. Oh, 
yes, there were many things that he would 
do! 

On the morning of the next day, a bright 
winter’s morning, the duke left the hospitable 
house in Westminster. It was with real regret 
and with a sense of parting from old friends that 
he said “Good-bye.” Mary Marriott was there. 
She was now in constant- confabulation with 
Rose every morning, and she formed one of the 
little group who assembled on the steps of the 
house in the quiet street behind the Abbey. 

A huge motor brougham, with Lord Camborne’s 
coronet upon the panels, was waiting there. A 
groom in motoring livery stood by the door. 
The chauffeur took off his hat as the duke came 
out. It was not often that such splendour was 
seen in that quarter. Then the brougham rolled 
swiftly away, and another page in the young 
man’s life was turned over. 

He did not drive straight to Lord Camborne’s 
house, -but told the chauffeur to stop at Gerrard’s 
in Regent Street, the florist’s, and went into the 
shop, where the great masses of hothouse flowers 


New Friends : New Ideas 167 


made the air all Arabia for him and all comers. 
His purchase of lilies and roses was so stupendous 
that even the imperturbable young ladies in that 
floral temple showed more than their usual 
interest. 

Indeed, the house of the Socialist would be gay 
that afternoon, and Mrs. Rose would be sur- 
rounded by a perfect garden of the flowers whose 
name she bore — a delicate thankoffering. 

In a few minutes more the duke arrived at 
Lord Camborne’s house in Grosvenor Street. 

Both his host and Lord Hayle were out, but 
Lady Constance received him. 

“ Now, you are going to be very quiet, and not 
talk much, ” she said. “ We are going to be most 
careful of you, after what you have gone through. 
I cannot tell you, duke, how agitated we have 
all been about you. Poor Gerald has been nearly 
mad with anxiety. He is so fond of you, you 
know. What terrible things you have been 
through — first the accident, and then that awful 
horror ! ’ ’ She shuddered. 

She was very fair as she stood there, in her 
simple morning gown, with all the beauty of 
sympathy added to her supreme loveliness. As 
the duke was shown to his own rooms he felt 
once more that throbbing pulsation, that sudden 
exhilaration, which he had known when Lady 
Constance had come to lunch at Paul’s and he 
had seen her for the first time. She did not 
know, nor could he tell her, how star-like she had 


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The Socialist 


been in his thoughts during the long, dark hours 
of his captivity, and how it was the radiant 
vision of her, etched into his memory, which had 
given strength to his obstinacy and power to resist 
the demands of his tormentors. 


CHAPTER XIV 


AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE 

T he Park Lane Theatre in Oxford Street, 
about two hundred yards east of the Marble 
Arch, was one of the most successful houses of 
those many theatres which have sprung up in 
London during the last few years. Its reputation 
was thoroughly high-class, and more particularly 
that of a theatre patronised by Society. It was 
in fact, the St. James's of that quarter of London. 
Here was no pit, and the gallery seats were half- 
a-crown for example. 

The long and successful run of a play at the 
Park Lane had just concluded, and the theatrical 
journalists were hazarding this or that surmise 
as to what would be next produced. For some 
reason or other there seemed to be a sort of 
mystery. The syndicate which owned the theatre 
would make no announcements through their 
manager, save only that the theatre had been let. 

Inquiries elicited nothing. This or that well- 
known entrepreneur, when asked the question 
had denied that he was interested in any forth- 
coming production at the theatre. There was 
a good deal of speculation on the point, and the 

169 


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The Socialist 


play-going public itself was beginning to be 
interested. 

Then, one morning, there appeared in the Daily 
Wire a paragraph, displayed in a prominent 
position, which stated that the theatre had been 
leased to Mr. Aubrey Flood, the well-known 
actor-manager, and the paragraph — obviously 
inspired — ^went on to hint at a most sensational 
development, of which the public might shortly 
expect news in the columns of the great Radical 
daily. 

A few days after the public had been informed 
of the Duke of Paddington’s extraordinary and 
terrible experiences, Mr. Aubrey Flood sat in his 
private room at the theatre. It was twelve 
o’clock noon, and he was dictating some letters 
to his secretary. The room was large and com- 
fortable, and was reached by a short passage 
at the back of the dress circle. The walls were 
hung with framed photographs, many of them 
of great size, and signed by names which were 
famous in the dramatic world. There was a 
curious likeness to each other in all these photo- 
graphs, when one regarded them closely. Men 
and women of entirely different faces and figures 
had all, nevertheless, the same curiously con- 
scious look lurking in the eyes and pose. They 
seemed well aware, in their beauty of face and 
figure or splendour of costume, that they were 
there for one purpose — to be looked at. 

Here and there the photographs were diversified 


At the Park Lane Theatre 


171 


by valuable old play-bills in gold frames, and 
close to the door was a page torn out of a ledger, 
the writing now faded and brown with years. It 
was a salary list of some forgotten provincial 
theatre, and the names of famous actors — at 
the time it was written utterly unknown to fame 
— ^were set down there in a thin, old-fashioned 
script.. Heading the list one saw “ Henry Irving, 
£1 105 . od., ” the weekly salary at that date of, per- 
haps, the greatest actor England has ever known. 

A huge writing-table was covered with papers, 
and there were two telephones, one hanging 
upon the wall, the other resting on its plated 
stand upon the table. Upon another table, 
much higher than the ordinary, and standing at 
one side of the room was a complete model theatre. 
Carefully executed studies of scenery half a yard 
square lay by the side of the model, and a com- 
plete miniature tableau had been built up upon 
the tiny stage, while the characters of the toy 
drama were represented by the little oblong cubes 
of wood, variously coloured. 

To complete the picture, it should be stated 
that, by the side of Mr. Aubrey Flood, nearer, 
indeed, to him than the telephone, stood a square 
bottle of cut-glass, a tumbler, and a syphon of 
soda-water. 

There was a knock at the door, and the stage 
door-keeper entered with a card. 

“Mr. Lionel C. Westwood, to see you, sir,” 
he said. 


l ’]2 


The Socialist 


“Ask him to come in at once, ” Flood answered. 

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood had, more or less, 
created his own profession, which was that of a 
very special sort of theatrical journalist. He 
had been tried for dramatic criticism on more than 
one paper, but had abandoned this form of 
writing for what he speedily found to be the more 
lucrative one of collecting early dramatic in- 
telligence. He wrote, too, the column of Green 
Room Gossip in more than one important paper, 
and was, indeed, of extreme use to managers 
who wished to contradict a rumour or to start 
one. 

He came hurriedly into the room — a short, 
easy, alert young man, wearing a voluminous 
frock-coat, and with a mixed aspect of extreme 
hurry and cordiality. 

“Oh, my dear Aubrey,’' he said, shaking the 
manager’s hand with effusive geniality, “so here 
you are! Directly I saw the paragraph in the 
Wire I wrote to you, asking for fuller information. 
Now, you won’t mind telling me all there is to 
know, will you?” 

“Sit down, Lionel,” said the actor. “Will 
you have a drink ? ” 

“No, thank you,” replied the little man, “I 
never take anything in the morning. Now, what 
is all this ? What are you going to do ? What are 
you going to produce? That ’s what I want to 
know. All London is wondering!” He rapped 
with his fingers upon the table, and his face 


At the Park Lane Theatre 173 


suddenly assumed a curiously ferret-like look 
“ What is it, Aubrey, dear boy?” he concluded. 

Flood leant back in his chair and lit a cigarette. 

“ It is a very big thing indeed, Lionel,” he said, 
'‘and I don’t know, dear boy, that I should be 
justified in letting you into it just yet. Why, we 
only read the play to the company this afternoon !” 

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood’s ears seemed positively 
to twitch as he elicited this first piece of informa- 
tion. 

“Oh!” he said, with a sudden gleam of satis- 
faction. “Well, that is something, at any rate. 
That is an item,. Aubrey. ” 

“ I am afraid that is as far as I shall be able 
to go,” the shrewd manager replied. 

This little comedy progressed for some twenty 
minutes, until at last Mr. Lionel C. Westwood 
was worked up into the right state of frantic 
curiosity and excitement. Then Aubrey Flood 
explained dimly the purpose and scope of the new 
play, hinted reluctantly at the achievement of a 
new star, a young actress of wonderful power and 
extreme beauty, who had hitherto been quite 
unknown in the provinces, and finally, with a 
gush of friendship, “Well, as it is you, Lionel, 
dear boy, though I would not do it for anybody 
else, ” promised the journalist that he might come 
to the theatre again that afternoon and form one 
of the privileged few, in addition to the company 
itself, who would be present at the reading of the 
play by its author, Mr. James Fabian Rose. 


174 


The Socialist 


Mr. Lionel C. Westwood went away more than 
contented, and Aubrey Flood resumed his corre- 
spondence. The train was laid and the match 
was applied to it. The Daily Wire, of course, 
was at the disposal of the syndicate, and would 
further its objects in every way through Mr. Good- 
rich. At the same time, the editor was quite 
shrewd enough to know that his paper was more 
particularly read by the middle-classes, and con- 
tent to sacrifice items of excessive interest con- 
cerning the play in order that it might be widely 
advertised. 

For they were all very greatly in earnest, these 
people. Even Aubrey Flood himself, while he 
was business man enough to regard this specula- 
tion as an excellent one, and believe that he 
would make a great deal of money over it, was 
nevertheless about to produce this epoch-making 
play from a real and earnest adherence to the 
doctrines it was to inculcate. 

There is a general opinion that your actor- 
manager and your actor are persons consumed 
by two inherent thirsts — applause and money. 
In a sense — perhaps in a very general sense — this 
is true, but there are still those actors and ac- 
tresses whose life is not entirely occupied with 
their own personality and chances of success. In 
the most egotistical of all occupations there are 
yet men and women who are animated by the 
spirit of altruism, and the hope of helping a great 
movement. Aubrey Flood was one of these men. 


At the Park Lane Theatre 175 

He was as convinced a Socialist as Fabian Rose 
himself. He was enlisted imder that banner, and 
he was prepared to go to any length to uphold 
it in the forefront of the great battle which was 
imminent. At the same time, Mr. Aubrey Flood 
saw no reason why propaganda should not pay ! 

He was dictating his letters, when once more 
the stage door-keeper came into the room with 
another card. It was that of Miss Mary Marriott. 

Flood started. 

“Show Miss Marriott in at once,’' he said, and 
his face changed a little, while a new light of 
interest came into his eyes. 

Your theatrical manager is not, as a rule, a 
person very susceptible to the charms of the 
ladies with whom he is constantly associated, 
though perhaps that is not quite the best way 
to put it. He is susceptible, but in a somewhat 
cynical and contemptuous way. The conquests 
in the world of the limelight are not always too 
difficult, and a man who pursues them out of 
habit and inclination very often learns to put a 
low figure upon achievement. But in the case 
of Mary Marriott, Aubrey Flood, who was no 
better or no worse than his colleagues, had felt 
differently. It does not necessarily mean that 
when a manager makes love to his leading lady, 
or to any lady in his company, he necessarily has 
the slightest real emotion in doing so. It is, in- 
deed, part of the day’s work, and half of the day’s 
necessity. That is all. 


The Socialist 


176 

But Flood had never met any one like Mary 
Marriott before. He was impressed by her beauty ; 
he recognised her talent ; he believed absolutely in 
her artistic capacities. At the same time he found 
himself feeling for this girl something to which he 
had long been a stranger — a feeling of reverence, 
or perhaps chivalry, would more easily describe it. 

Yes, when he was with her he remembered his 
younger days when, as a boyish undergraduate 
from Oxford, he had played tennis with the 
daughters of the squire on the lawns of his father's 
rectory. Then all women passably fair and 
passably young had been mysterious goddesses. 
Mary Marriott sometimes brought the hardened 
and cynical man of the world, whose only real 
passion was for the cause of Socialism, back to 
the ideals of his youth, and he coimted himself 
fortunate that fate had thrown her in his way. 

Mary came into the room. He rose and shook 
her heartily by the hand. 

“My dear Miss Marriott,” he said — ^an intimate 
of his would have noticed a slight change in 'his 
way of addressing her, for to most lady members 
of his company he would have said “my dear,” 
“ to what do I owe this call? I thought we were 
all going to meet at half-past two to hear the play 
read! Do sit down.” 

Mary smiled at him. She liked Mr. Flood. 
She knew the sickening familiarities of the men 
who had controlled some of the companies in 
which she had been. 


At the Park Lane Theatre 177 

At first it had been horrible, then she had be- 
come a little accustomed and blunted to it. She 
had endured without any signs of outrage the 
familiar touch upon the arm, the bold intimacy 
of voice and manner. It was refreshing now to 
meet a man who behaved to her as a gentleman 
behaves to a lady in a society where the footlights 
are not. 

In fact, everything was refreshing, new, and 
exhilarating to Mary now, since that day, that 
terrible day of fog and gloom, when, after her 
long and perilous search for an engagement she 
had sat in her little attic flat in Bloomsbury and 
the mustard-bearded man had knocked at the 
door with all the suddenness of wonder of the 
fairy godmother herself to Cinderella. 

She sat down, and there was a moment’s pause. 

“Well, do you know, Mr. Flood,” she said at 
length, hesitating a little, and feeling embarrassed, 
“ I have come to ask you a most extraordinary 
favour.” 

All sorts of ideas crossed the swift, cinemato- 
graphic mind of the manager. It could not be 
that she wanted an advance of salary, because all 
the company were to be paid for rehearsals, and 
directly the contract had been signed with him 
and Fabian Rose, Mary Marriott’s half-salary 
had begun. It could not be that she wanted 
more “fat” in the part, because she realised the 
rigidity of Rose’s censorship in such a matter; 
and, besides, she was too much an artist to want 

13 


178 


The Socialist 


the centre of the stage all the time. What could 
it be? His face showed nothing of his thoughts. 
All he said was, '‘Miss Marriott, I am sure you 
will not ask me anything that I shall not be able 
to grant. 

“But I think on this occasion you might have 
some difficulty, Mr. Flood,’’ Mary answered, with 
half a smile — the man thought he had never 
seen such charm and such self-possession. 

Her voice was like a silver bell, heard far away 
on a mountain side. No, it was n’t, it was like 
water falling into water — ^like a tiny waterfall, 
falling into a deep, translucent pool in a wood! 

“Go on. Miss Marriott,” he replied, with a 
smile. 

“I want to bring some one to the reading of 
the play this afternoon,” she said. 

“That is all right,” he answered; “but pro- 
vided, of course, that your friend will not divulge 
anything about the play more than we allow him 
to do. Why, I have just given little Lionel C. 
Westwood permission to come and hear the play 
read. Of course, Mr. Rose must have a say in the 
matter. But who do you want to bring?” 

“I have asked Mr. Rose,” Mary replied. “I 
saw him this morning, and he raised no objections, 
provided only that you gave your consent.” 

“Well, then, it is a foregone conclusion,” Flood 
returned; “ but who is it?” 

“Well,” Mary answered, “it is the Duke of 
Paddington.” 


At the Park Lane Theatre 179 


Aubrey Flood looked at her for a moment, his 
eyes wide with amazement. 

“The man himself! By Jove!” he said, “the 
very man! Do you think this is wise?” 

“He has given me his promise,” Mary an- 
swered, “that he comes merely as an interested 
spectator. ” 

“Oh, well, then,” Flood answered, “if that 
is the case, by all means let him come, Miss Mar- 
riott. Of course, if Rose does not mind, I am 
sure I don’t; but when you first mentioned his 
name I had a flitting vision that he was coming 
for — not at all in a friendly way — in fact, to 
gather material for a libel action in case his 
personality is indicated too plainly in the play.” 

“But it is not, Mr. Flood, is it?” Mary 
asked. 

“ Oh, no, ” the actor answered ; “ his personality 
is not indicated at all. We don’t caricature 

people, we indicate types. He is Well, 

perhaps I should hardly even have used the word 
indicate at all — he is merely used as a peg upon 
which to hang our theories. I have read the 
play and you have not, and I am sure that what 
I say is quite correct. At the same time, you 
know. Miss Marriott, all London will guess at 
whom we are hitting in the first instance — not 
so much because he happens to be an individual 
enemy of the Cause as that he is representative 
of the army of monopolists we are endeavouring 
to destroy.” 


i8o 


The Socialist 


“ I am sure he won’t mind at all, ” Mary Marriott 
said, and Flood noticed with an odd uneasiness 
that she flushed a little. “ I have had the privi- 
lege of seeing something of the duke lately, and 
he really seems to be taking an interest in the 
socialistic movement, though of course from 
quite a different point of view to ours.’’ 

“ I see, ” Flood replied slowly. “ Miss Marriott, 

you are trying ” And then he stopped, he 

thought it better to leave his thought unspoken. 

“ Very well, then, ” he replied, “ so be it. Bring 
him, by all means.” 

“May I telephone?” Mary said, “or, rather 
would you have a message telephoned to Gros- 
venor Street, Mr. Flood? The duke is staying 
with Lord Camborne, and I promised that if it 
was possible for him to hear the reading of the 
play I would let him know. If you telephone 
to him that there is no objection he will arrive 
here at half-past two o’clock.” 

“By all means,” Flood answered, “I will do 
it myself. I have had a good many interesting 
experiences in my lifetime, but this will be the 
first time that I have talked to a duke over the 
telephone.” He laughed a little sardonically as 
Mary rose. 

“ By the way, what are you going to do now?” 
he said. 

“It is nearly one o’clock. I am going home 
to my flat for lunch,” Mary answered. 

“ No, you are not. Miss Marriott,” he answered. 


At the Park Lane Theatre i8i 

“You are coming out to lunch with me, if you 
please.” 

Mary hesitated for a moment, then smiled 
radiantly, and thanked him. “It is very kind 
of you,” she said. “Of course I will, since you 
ask me.” 

Together, a few minutes afterwards, they left 
the theatre and drove down to Frascati’s. 

The lunch was bright and merry. Upon the 
stage the usual convenances are not observed, 
because, indeed, it would be impossible that they 
should be. Apart from them any abuses of stage 
life, and the danger which belongs to the meeting 
of youngish men and women without the usual 
restraints of society, without the usual restraints 
which society imposes, there is, nevertheless, in 
many instances a real and true camaraderie of 
the sexes which is as charming as it is without 
offence. 

The girl lunched with the actor-manager, gaily 
and happily. The simple omelette, fines herhes, 
the red mullet and the grilled kidneys were per- 
fectly cooked, and the bottle of Beaune — ^well, it 
was Moulin h Vent, and what more can be said? 

They talked over the play from various points 
of view. First of all it was from the aspect of 
its probable success. They agreed that this 
seemed assured. Then they talked eagerly, keenly 
of the artistic possibilities of it. Mary had 
read a scene or two — Fabian Rose had given her 
the typewritten manuscript — but of the play as 


i 82 


The Socialist 


a whole she had no more than a vague idea. This, 
to both of them, was the most interesting part 
of their talk. 

Aubrey was an artist in every way. He was 
a successful artist and had combined commercial 
success with his real work, otherwise he would 
not have been a “successful artist.’' But he 
cared very much, nevertheless, for the splendour 
of what he believed to be the greatest art in the 
world. He was sincere, as Mary was also, in his 
belief in the high mission of the stage. 

Finally, over their coffee, they talked of what 
the play — already assumed successful and im- 
portant — would mean to Socialism. 

Mary was but a new convert. Her ideas about 
the cause to which, in her young enthusiasm, she 
had pledged herself were nebulous. She had 
much to learn. She was learning much. Yet 
her heart warmed up as Aubrey Flood let his 
words go, and told her of his ambitions that this 
play should indeed be a great thing for the Cause. 
He was a clever and well-known actor, a suc- 
cessful manager, under a new aspect altogether. 
She had met people like Aubrey Flood before, 
but no single one of them had ever shown her that 
beneath his life of the theatre lay any deep and 
underlying motive, and it uplifted her, she felt 
that strange sense of brotherhood which those 
who are united against the world always know. 
She recognised that Aubrey Flood, beneath his 
exterior, was as keen and convinced a Socialist 


At the Park Lane Theatre 183 

as Fabian Rose, or Mr. Conrad. The fact sub- 
stantiated her own new theories and induced in 
her the throbbing sense of being an officer in a 
great army. 

“I wish I had known before,” she said to him 
as they were preparing to leave the restaurant. 
“ I wish I had known before, then, indeed, I might 
have had an ethical motive in my life, which I 
now see and feel has been lacking for a long 
time.” 

“You are now,” he answered, “catching some- 
thing of our own enthusiasm, and it is by the 
most extraordinary chain of events that Rose 
and you, Conrad and myself have come into 
touch with the Duke of Paddington himself. 
Conrad, of course, would tell you that Providence 
had designed it. I cannot go so far as that. I 
simply say that it is chance. All the same, it is 
a most marvellous thing. We are going to startle 
England.” 

Mary looked at him for a moment. They had 
just got into the hansom which was to drive them 
back to the theatre. 

“I don’t see, Mr. Flood,” she said in a quiet 
voice, “why it is any more easy to believe that 
something you call ‘chance’ brings things about 
than it is difficult to believe that something Mr. 
Conrad calls ‘Providence’ should effect the same 
results.” 

Flood looked at her in his turn. Here was a 
most strange young lady of the stage, indeed. 


184 


The Socialist 


He tried to think of something to say, but could 
not. The simple logic of her answer forbade 
retort. 

Indeed, why should any one want to gather 
up ‘"coincidences,” call the controlling power 
of them “ chance, ” and not admit that Providence 
itself had ordered them? 

He could not think beyond that, and he was 
silent. He remembered his old father at the 
country rectory. He remembered the simple 
faith of his father and mother and his sisters, and 
he realised with a sudden shock of pain that the 
reason why he strove to call the strange Director- 
ship of the affairs of life by a name which had no 
especial meaning was because he was not pre- 
pared to submit to the teachings and the order 
of the Faith. 

Mary also seemed to realise that her words 
had struck home to a heart which was not yet 
entirely atrophied by the rush of life in the world 
of the stage. 

She turned to him and smiled slightly, rather 
sadly, indeed. 

“Mr. Flood,” she said, “you and I were both 
bom in the same country but perhaps you have 
been over the frontier for a long time.” 

“And perhaps,” he answered, and while he 
did so his voice sounded in his own ears strange 
and unfamiliar, “and perhaps even a theatrical 
manager may some day ask for his passport to 
return. ” 


At the Park Lane Theatre 185 


They drew up at the stage door of the Park 
Lane Theatre. 

Mary did not go back to Mr. Flood’s room. 
She went straight on to the stage. The curtain 
was up. The house was swathed in brown hol- 
land, and only a faint light came down from the 
glass dome in the roof, showing the whole place 
melancholy and bizarre. The stage itself was a 
great expanse of dirty boards, stretching right 
away to a brick wall at the back, in which was 
a huge slit, with two dingily-painted doors 
covering it, by which scenery was brought into 
the scene-dock a little behind. 

Two or three chairs were set down by the un- 
lighted footlights, and there was a tiny table by 
one of them. The limits of the scene which 
would be set one day were marked off by chalk 
lines upon the boards. Two or three nondescript 
men in soft felt hats wandered about in the wings, 
and on the prompt side, up a ladder and standing 
on the platform above where is the switchboard 
which controls the stage lights, the electrician — 
in a dirty white linen coat — was twisting wires 
from one plug to another, and noisily whistling 
the last popular song. 

It was a scene of drab materialism, and the 
two or three little groups of people who stood 
here and there neither added to it nor gave it any 
animation. 

As Mary went “on” the actors and actresses 
who were waiting there looked at her with curious 


The Socialist 


1 86 

eyes. One or two she knew — they were often 
at the Actors’ Association. Who her colleagues 
as principals were she had not been told, and as 
yet had no idea, save only of course that she was 
to act with Aubrey Flood himself. 

She saw, however, with a little thrill of pleasure 
that Dorothy French was there. She herself 
had obtained a small part for her little friend from 
Fabian Rose. Dolly came hurrying up to her, 
the girl’s high-heeled shoes echoing strangely 
upon the boards and sending out a muffled 
drum-like note into the dim, shrouded auditorium 
beyond. 

“Oh, Mary dear,” Dolly whispered, “I am so 
glad to see you! I have not seen you for such 
a long time, and it ’s been so awfully good of you 
to find a shop for me. But what an extraordinary 
business it all is! None of us seem to know any- 
thing about it. The whole thing is a perfect 
mystery, and is it really true?” she continued, 
with a touch of envy, “is it really true, Mary 
dear, that you are going to play lead?” 

Mary sighed a little. “Well,” she said, “I 
suppose it is.” 

“Then you know all about it?” Dolly answered 
quickly. “Now, do tell me, Mary, what it is all 
about. The papers are full of rumours.” 

Mary realised what she had often realised 
before in her stage career, that friendships last 
for a tour, and are spoiled by the first hintings 
of success. She had always been fond of little 


At the Park Lane Theatre 187 


Dolly French, pretty little Dolly French; but here 
at the very first intimation of her own promotion, 
was Dolly, with a changed voice and a different 
look in her eyes, wearing an eager, questioning 
envious look. 

“I know very little, Dolly,” she answered 
rather shortly, “and what I do know I must not 
tell. Everybody will know soon, of course.” 

Dorothy looked at her for a moment in silence. 
Then she said: “Oh, Mary! I see that you are 
already feeling the responsibilities of being Lead.” 
She tittered rather bitterly, turned away, and 
rejoined the group from which she had come. 

Every one seemed to watch Mary for a few 
moments — she was standing quite by herself — 
when there was a noise of footsteps and a group 
of people came through the pass-door and down 
the three or four steps which led to the stage 
itself. 

Aubrey Flood was the first, without a hat 
and in an ordinary lotmge suit. James Fabian 
Rose, carrying a roll of brown paper in his hand, 
and wearing a tweed overcoat and soft felt hat, 
followed him. 

Behind the two was another man, who walked 
close to the pioneers, and looked roimd him with 
an air of unfamiliarity. 

He was a tallish, clean-shaven young man 
who wore a heavy fur coat. 

Mary turned round and went up to the group. 

“ Yes, ” Aubrey Flood said ; “ yes, Miss Marriott, 


i88 


The Socialist 


here indeed is his Grace, who has come to hear 
how we are going to attack him.’’ 

The duke looked at Flood with a half smile, 
there seemed to be something condescending in 
it, then he turned eagerly to Mary. “Oh, Miss 
Marriott,” he said, “you cannot think how inter- 
esting all this is to me, and how grateful I am 
to you for enabling me to see it all. ” 

He looked up and round, and there was some- 
thing in his voice that showed he was alert and 
aware — aware and curious. 

“We shall be about half an hour before we 
begin to read the play, your Grace,” Aubrey 
Flood said. “Would you like to be shown over 
the theatre — that is, have you ever been over a 
theatre from the ‘behind-the-scenes’ point of 
view, as it were?” 

“No, I have not,” the duke answered, “and I 
should like to very much.” 

At the same moment the stage manager came 
hurrying up to Aubrey Flood. The actor turned 
to the duke and to Mary Marriott. 

“Miss Marriott,” he said, “would you show 
the duke something of the theatre? I must talk 
to Mr. Howard.” 

Mary and the duke moved away together. 

“I don’t quite know what to show you,” she 
said, “and will you really be interested in the way 
we present our illusions?” 

“Miss Marriott,” the duke answered, “I want 
to know all sorts of things which I have never 


At the Park Lane Theatre 189 


known before. I ’ve always been boxed up, so 
to say. Life has been rather a monotonous 
procession for me up to the present. Now I am 
simply greedy and eager for new sensations.” 

“Then, come along,” the girl answered; “come 
along, and I will show you the mechanism by 
which we produce our effects. ’ ’ 

“Oh, no,” the duke answered, “you cannot 
show me that, Miss Marriott, at all. You can 
show me a mere mechanism which surroimds 
and assists art. That is all you can show me. 
It will be in the future that you will show me art 
itself. ” 

She looked at him with a quiet, considering 
eye, forgetting for a moment who he was: “Do 
you know,” she said, “I think you must be an 
artist. ” 

The duke looked at her rather strangely. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY 

HE high wall which shields the great palace 



1 of the Dukes of Paddington from the gaze 
of the ordinary passer-by is broken in its centre 
by the treble ornamental gates of ironwork. They 
are gates with a history, but they are gates which 
very few Londoners of the present generation 
have ever seen opened. But about fifty feet to 
the right of the central entrance there is a little 
green door set in the thickness of the high brick 
wall, with a shining bell-push in the lintel. It is 
through this door that people who have business 
with the ducal house, now so void and empty 
of living interest, enter and make acquaintance 
with the great courtyard in front of the facade. 

The big gates during the last few days had been 
open for several hours each morning and after- 
noon, while a policeman had been stationed by 
them. Carts full of building materials had been 
driven in, while the gap in the wall, which had been 
made by the bomb, was built up and repaired. 

Therefore, Arthur Burnside, in his black bowler 
hat and unfashionable overcoat, did not trouble 
to ring the electric bell, which brought the ducal 


The Manuscript in the Library 191 


porter to the little door in the wall, but turned 
in at the main entrance. 

The policeman knew him, and, vaguely recog- 
nising him as a henchman of the entourage^ saluted 
as the young scholar of Paul’s went by. The 
great front door of the house was closed. Six 
people lived in the empty palace and kept its 
solitariness warm, but there was a side entrance 
which they used, and which Burnside, since 
Colonel Simpson had confirmed the dukes’ ap- 
pointment, used also. 

He went in, walking briskly through the keen 
air, rang the bell, was admitted by an under- 
steward, and hung up his coat and hat in a small 
lobby. Then he traversed a longish corridor, 
pushed open a green baize door at the end of it, 
and came into the great central hall of the house. 
As he did so he looked round him, stopped, and 
sighed. 

There was a great marble staircase before him, 
a staircase of white marble from Carrara, which 
mounted to a wonderful marble balcony, which 
ran round the central square of the famous house. 
Statues, each one of which was known and priced 
minutely in the catalogues of the connoisseurs, 
were standing in their cold beauty on the stairway. 
The celebrated purple carpet from Teheran ran up 
to the gallery above. All round in the hall were 
huge doors of mahogany, leading to this or that 
marvellous salon. Another and older carpet of 
purple, extraordinarily large and woven in Persia 


192 


The Socialist 


for the late duke many years ago, covered the 
tesselated pavement. There were chairs set 
about, examples of priceless Chippendale, and 
little glass-topped tables held collections of 
miniatures, which were as well known as they 
were priceless. 

The three pictures which hung in the lower 
part of the great hall beneath the gallery, and 
surrounding the door which led to the library, 
were three Gainsboroughs of riant beauty and 
incomparable value. 

But it was all a dead house, a house where 
nobody lived, a museum of priceless treasures 
which nobody ever saw. 

As the young man stepped across the heavy 
carpet, walking upon it as one walks upon a 
well-trimmed tennis lawn, he shuddered a little 
to think that all this collection of beauty was 
crammed together in a dead profusion which 
appealed to nobody. He said to himself: “How 
terrible it all is! How terrible it is to think of 
this huge palace of art, set in the very centre of 
London, closed and shuttered with no appeal to 
the world. No one can come and see these lovely 
and famous things, and I myself, who appreciate 
each and every one of them, am oppressed, not 
only by the silence and seclusion of it all, but 
also by the fact that in this one house there are 
stored treasures of art so thickly that one has no 
time to think about this before the adjacent other 
one comes and obscures one’s comprehension. ” 


The Manuscript in the Library 193 

He pushed open the vast panelled door which 
led to the library and entered. The library was 
a huge place, as big as the central room in the 
town hall of any flourishing provincial town. 
The ceiling was designed by Adams, and the 
supreme genius of that master of plaster- work 
seemed to burgeon out and down into the place, 
reminding one always that the great artist had 
been here. The books, in their glass-fronted 
cabinets, reached only to a half-height of the 
walls. On the top of the shelves stood the late 
duke’s well-known collection of Chinese porcelain 
of the Ming dynasty. 

There were three great fires in the place, and 
each one of them was glowing now, as the solitary 
young scholar of Paul’s entered and closed the 
heavy twelve-foot door behind him. 

He went up to the largest fireplace of all, where 
logs were hissing in the hot enveloping flame. 
He turned his back upon it and surveyed the vast 
expanse before him. The books in the room 
were probably worth three hundred thousand 
pounds. There were the first four folios of 
Shakespeare, there was a great case which held 
the Vinegar Bible, the Breeches Bible, and the 
very earliest black-letter copy of the Scriptures, 
printed by Schwartz and Pannheim upon the 
heights of the Apennines in fear of their death 
should it become known. ... It was simply 
beyond statement, thirty or forty great collec- 
tions were comprised in this one room. The 
13 


194 


The Socialist 


young scholar’s love of books and appreciation 
of their history thrilled at the sight of all this 
, ^wealth, thrilled to know that fortune had given 
him the temporary control of it all. 

Upon a great red leather-covered writing- 
table, set by the principal fireside, lay his papers 
and the calf-bound volumes in which, with 
scrupulous care and accurate knowledge, he was 
completing the work of cataloguing which the 
death of his predecessor had left unfinished. He 
went towards the table, looked at the records of 
his first fortnight’s work for a moment or two, 
sighed a little, and then sat down and concen- 
trated his mind upon what he had to do. 

For several hours he worked steadily' — it had 
been through his great capacity for steady, unin- 
terrupted and concentrated work that this young 
man had risen from the ordinary Board school 
to the higher-grade school, and had won the most 
difficult and brilliant scholarship that the aristo- 
cratic college of St. Paul’s at Oxford had in its gift. 

Here was a young man determined to get on; 
nothing could stop him, nothing could stand in 
his way. In temperament he was like a steel 
drill that, driven by tireless energy, goes lower and 
lower through the granite rock, and through the 
quartz, until at last the desired strata is reached 
and won. 

He worked the whole morning with hardly a 
pause. At one o’clock he took a paper of sand- 
wiches from his pocket and made his simple meal. 


The Manuscript in the Library 195 

Then he worked onwards till three. At that 
time, feeling that he had done his duty, or rather 
more, by his employer the duke, whom, by the 
way, he had never seen since his appointment 
as librarian nor subsequently during the extra- 
ordinary ferment that his Grace’s disappearance, 
reappearance, and return to health had occasioned 
in the Press, he put away the catalogue upon 
which he was engaged. 

Then he opened a drawer in the great writing- 
table, a locked drawer, and pulled out a pile of 
manuscript. He turned it over until the last 
few pages were displayed. Then, with a puck- 
ered forehead and a mouth which was undecided 
only because it was critical, the shabby young 
man in the black clothes, surrounded by evidence 
of incalculable wealth read steadily at what he 
designed to be a key which should open modern 
political life to him. 

He read on and on, now and again making an 
annotation with his foimtain pen, sometimes 
waiting for two or three minutes before he scored 
through a passage or added a few words. Then 
at last a clock, a great clock which had been 
brought from Versailles, beat out the hour of 
four with deep sonorous notes like the voice of 
an old man. 

Burnside pulled his nickel watch from his 
pocket, saw that it synchronised with the stately 
time given by the guardian of the library, and 
hurried away. 


196 


The Socialist 


He crossed the hall, went down the passage 
which led to the side door, put on his hat and 
coat, and disappeared into Piccadilly, quite for- 
getting that he had left the last pages of his 
manuscript upon the writing-table. 

It was a fortnight since the duke had been 
allowed to listen to the reading of the play at 
the Park Lane Theatre. 

When he had heard James Fabian Rose read 
the work to the company who sat and stood 
around upon the grey and empty stage the duke 
had not been very much impressed. He had not 
been impressed — ^that is to say — with the actual 
achievement of Rose’s work. He had listened 
with some bewilderment to the tags, stage di- 
rections, and so forth, and now and then he had 
been caught up into a mental reverie by some 
biting, stinging paradox or epigram. 

As he sat there the duke had been frankly 
watching Mary Marriott’s face as she listened to 
the author’s words. He saw her eyes light up 
and become intent, or flicker down into a strange 
gloom. He marked the sudden rigidity of her 
pose, the relaxation of it when something was 
afoot in which she was not particularly concerned, 
the whole careful attention and sympathetic 
watching of the girl. What all this play meant, 
he, sitting on a chair on the O.P. side of the stage, 
could hardly gather. He realised, nevertheless, 
by watching Mary, and by surveying the other 


The Manuscript in the Library 197 

members of the company, that the play was 
obviously something rather important and out 
of the usual run of such things. 

To him it conveyed little or nothing, but he 
had become sufficiently mobile in mind to realise 
that probably this happening in the grey light 
of the afternoon and the shabby surroundings 
of the stage were yet instinct with potentiality, 
and would become' — in their full fruition- — some- 
thing charged with purpose and an appeal to the 
general world. 

After it was all over he had thanked Rose, 
Aubrey Flood, and Mary Marriott, had got into a 
cab and been driven back to Grosvenor Street. 
He was conscious himself at the moment that he 
had been a little unresponsive and chilly in his 
manner, but for the life of him he had n’t been 
able to express himself more pleasantly. 

“Thank you so much. Miss Marriott,” he had 
said, “for letting me come here this afternoon. 
Indeed, Mr. Rose, I think it is most sporting of 
you to ask me. For my part, I frankly confess 
I don’t realise what it ’s all about! It ’s all so 
new to me, you know, to hear something read 
in this way, and I cannot grasp it as a whole. At 
the same time,” he concluded with a weary 
smile, “at the same time, if this is your attack 
upon me, or, rather, upon people like me, then, 
my dear Mr. Rose, I think you ought to sharpen 
your sword.” 

As he had said this both Aubrey Flood and the 


198 


The Socialist 


great Socialist had chuckled, while the former 
remarked, “Wait and see, your Grace. Wait and 
see what we can eventually spin out of such dull 
ritual on such a grey afternoon as this. ” 

“I will, Mr. Rose,” the duke had answered 
rather shortly, and gone back to the cheery 
house in Grosvenor Street. 

He had told Lord Hayle and Lady Constance all 
about his experience of the afternoon. Neither 
of them had been very interested, and Lady 
Constance remarked that all “excursions into 
les coulisses must surely be rather disappointing.” 

In fact, the Camborne family regarded the 
whole thing as a rather too amiable weakness on 
the part of their guest. The bishop, who was 
always running backwards and forwards at this 
time from his palace at Carlton to his house in 
Grosvenor Street, often made a genial jest upon 
the subject to the young man. “My dear Pad- 
dington,” he would say, “how is the attack 
going? Ha, ha! Every day, when I open my 
newspapers, I find that the general public is being 
worked up to a perfect froth of excitement about 
this forthcoming theatrical enterprise. A peer 
in the pillory! The duke in the dock! How 
amusing it all is!” 

Thus the bishop scoffed on more than one 
occasion, and his witticisms had no very ex- 
hilarating effect upon the duke. 

His life in Grosvenor Street was happier with 
the younger members of the family. His dear 


The Manuscript in the Library 199 

friend Gerald was still as sympathetic and vivid 
as ever. Lord Hayle had passed the test of 
intimate human association, and come out of it 
very well. Lady Constance was as ever — ^beauti- 
ful, sweet, and sympathetic — but the duke was 
finding that in the very splendour of the girl’s 
nature and appearance there was something a 
trifle cloying. He was deeply in love with her; 
he knew also that she cared for him, but for the 
first time in his guarded, shielded life he saw 
before him times of indecision and of trouble. 
Life, which had seemed so smooth and stately, 
so well ordered a thing, was not quite what it 
had been. The serene repose of his mind was 
disturbed by all he had gone through. 

Sometimes he went and took tea with Mrs. 
Rose, and often her husband, Mr. Conrad, and 
Mary Marriott were there. He never attempted 
to argue with any of them. He took their shafts 
of wit with a quiet complaisance, but if they 
thought that their epigrams had not gone home 
they were very deeply mistaken. 

One afternoon, tired and troubled, the duke 
bethought himself of his great house in Picca-; 
dilly. He walked there from Grosvenor Street, 
astonished the servants by ringing the bell, and,- 
entering, he moodily surveyed some of his famous 
possessions. 

Then he turned into the library. The three 
great fires were burning down. It was about 
six o’clock. He switched on the electric light 


200 


The Socialist 


himself and wandered through the maze of his 
treasures. 

He came up to a table — a huge writing-table, 
covered with red leather — and saw upon it five 
or six sheets of manuscript in careful handwriting. 
Forgetting exactly what he was doing, think- 
ing nothing of the man he had appointed to be 
librarian, the duke sat down and began to read. 


CHAPTER XVI 


ARTHUR BURNSIDE’S VIEWS 

HIS was the doctiment that the duke read 



1 with amazement and growing interest in 
the great empty library of his palace. It was 
obviously the peroration of an important work — 

“Are we already in the position of ancient 
Rome? Are we moribund? No barbarians, in- 
deed, stand with menace of conquering at our 
gates, but it was not the barbarians who over- 
threw the greatness of the Roman Empire. The 
greatness had already departed long before the 
Huns and Goths swept down upon its walls. 
In her early strength Rome, the capital of the 
world, would have rolled back her invaders, as a 
rock resists the onslaught of an angry wave; but 
Rome, when she fell, was no longer as she had 
been in her earlier days. 

“And we must ask ourselves now whether our 
own civilisation, with all its wonders, is not tending 
to a like end ? Are we not reproducing in faithful 
detail every cause which led to the downfall of 
the civilisations of other days? We are Im- 
perialists, that is to say, we take tribute from 
conquered races. Great fortunes are constantly 


201 


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The Socialist 


accumulated, to the defeat of individuals in our 
midst. An enormous population is with us, 
which owns no property, and lives always in 
grinding poverty. A great portion of the land of 
the country has gone out of cultivation. The 
physical deterioration of Englishmen is a well 
known and most alarming fact, which can be 
proved over and over again by the statistics 
of the medical schools. I am not concerned here 
to prove any statements I make in the last few 
lines of this book. They have been proved in the 
earlier portions. This is a summing up. 

“And it is for these reasons that we who are 
socialists say that the system which is producing 
such appalling results shall not be allowed to 
continue. It is a system which has taken from 
religion much of its natural appeal and consoling 
power over the hearts and souls of the majority. 
It is a system which has destroyed, handicapped, 
and turned the protection of the useful and 
necessary things of life into a soulless progress of 
mechanism controlled by slaves. It is a system 
which awards the palm of success to the unscru- 
pulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on 
to the streets, and transforms upright men into 
mean-spirited time-servers. 

“It cannot continue. 

“In the end it is bound to work its own over- 
throw. 

“Socialism, with its promise of freedom, its 
larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace 


Arthur Burnside’s Views 


203 


over war, its binding of the races of the earth into 
one all-embracing brotherhood, must in the end 
prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying 
present ; Socialism throbs with the life of the days 
that are to be. Socialism has claimed its martyrs 
in the past, and to-day, also, it has claimed them. 
But before long the martyrs in the cause of 
humanity all will see' — ^let us hope and believe 
from another and better ordered life^ — ^that their 
efforts have not been in vain. 

“I write, perhaps, in these last words, from a 
somewhat academic standpoint. I do not think, 
however, that my readers who have followed me 
so far will accuse me of pure theorising in the 
earlier portions of this work. At the same time, 
experience is merely the lesson learnt by event, 
and I do not think I shall be unduly ponderous 
if I again, and finally, draw attention to those 
stupendous teachings which the student of history 
draws from the past and applies to the ameliora- 
tion of the present. 

“It cannot be too loudly proclaimed! Acad- 
emic evolution necessarily goes hand-in-hand with 
a moral development strictly related to it. Now- 
adays, broken into the individualistic system, we 
regard with astonishment the fierce patriotism 
which inflamed the little cities and republics of 
antiquity, the States of Greece, the Kingdoms 
of Italy, and even the larger and less civilised 
hordes of the North. Yet, if we regard it for a 
moment, we shall see that this sentiment was 


204 


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merely inspired by the eradicable instinct of self- 
preservation. In the bosom of the clans, in the 
heart of the families, interests were consolidated 
and the fact was realised. And in those days, 
also, defeat might not only bring ruin and a total 
loss of comfort and worldly possession, but it 
would also mean slavery. 

“In those days, indeed, the conqueror, whether 
barbarian or not, could not fail to appear. He 
intervened always wherever great wealth was 
amassed in the hands of a population incapable 
of defending it. And, taking these lessons of 
history to ourselves, we can see that, though the 
whole conditions of society have changed, a 
conqueror must still appear and throw down 
the existing system with all its horrors and 
anachronisms. 

“Once more let me point out that England at 
present is dominated by certain economic facts. 

“Although there is plenty of food, clothing, and 
shelter available in the country, an enormous 
population of these islands do not obtain enough 
of any of them to support life properly, or even 
in the simplest way possible, to secure ordinary 
health and ordinary enjo3mient of existence. 

“Again, then, the statistics quoted in the 
earlier part of this work inevitably show, with 
all the rigour of hard facts and imassailable 
statistics, that each year many people die from 
overwork or want. 

“The producers of wealth are poor, miserable. 


Arthur Burnside’s Views 


205 


and enslaved, while those who enjoy the wealth 
thus produced in misery are idle, corrupt, and 
enervated by their riches. There are more than 
a million men needing work and wages in England 
at the present moment, while, at the same time, 
we keep the land of the country less than one- 
quarter tilled. 

“As Mr. John Kenworthy has written, in words 
which re-echo and reverberate in the ears of 
modern men: ‘These accusations are facts as 
palpable and clear as heaven and earth above us 
and beneath us ; not to be disputed by any person 
of ordinary sense. Surely we have enough of 
stupidity and wrong here to certify ourselves a 
nation not only “ mostly fools” but largely knaves 
also.’ 

“In truth nobody disputes this state of affairs. 
You may prove the extremest horrors straight 
from Government Blue Books. Recently some 
very full particulars concerning mining industries 
were put into one of those Government coffins 
for burying disagreeable truths. One might ex- 
pect that, after having such particulars of over- 
work underpaid and murderous housing thrust 
into their notice, a Parliament which served 
humanity and not the brood of Mammon would 
sit night and day until the law had done what 
law can do to right these wrongs. But no, the 
six hundred gentlemen of Parliament who play 
with the mouse-like people in a gentle, cat-like 
fashion, did — ^just nothing, as usual! No doubt 


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The Socialist 


members of Parliament are filled with good resolu- 
tions to do something for the people ; but the in- 
tentions always go down before the hard fact 
that doing anything for the people is found to 
mean, in practice, giving up some right of property. 

“ Upon this one issue, the right of property, the 
whole social question centres. The man who has 
discovered what the right of property means now, 
and what it ought to mean, and would mean 
among good and honest people, may claim to have 
solved the problem of misery which baffles the 
nations of the world.’' 

The duke put the manuscript down upon the 
huge, leather-covered table and looked at it 
thoughtfully. He saw the neat, careful writing 
— ^the writing of a man who had been accustomed 
to write Greek. He smiled to himself with a 
dreamy appreciation of the well-known fact that 
no scholar writes like an ordinary man, and that 
always the hand which, in youth at a public 
school, has been inured to the careful tracing of 
Greek script, betrays itself when writing English 
by a meticulous care in the forming of each 
individual word. 

Then, quite suddenly, the duke sat down and 
leaned back in a high-cushioned chair. He had 
not been in his famous library for a very long 
time. He felt forlorn and alone in it, and he 
looked roimd upon its glories with a sort of 
wonder. ‘'Does all this belong to me?” he 


Arthur Burnside’s Views 


207 


thought. “Of course it does, and yet how little 
I see of it; how little I know of it! I pay a man 
merely to catalogue the treasures here.’' 

The electric lights glowed softly all over the 
vast place and the young man looked round him 
with a sigh of perplexity. It did not interest him 
very much to know that on all sides were books 
and manuscripts that were absolutely priceless. 
He felt, as he sat there, that the world was a 
most perplexing place. 

The great mahogany door at the end of the 
library opened, and the trusted servant in charge 
of the staff still maintained in the ducal house 
hurried in. 

“Your Grace," he said, as he came up to the 
duke, “can I bring you anything? Can I do 
anything?" 

The duke had not an idea of the man’s name — 
all these details were arranged by Colonel Simp- 
son for the young man. 

“ No, no, " he said ; ‘ I thank you very much but 
I don’t want anything. I shall be leaving the 
house very soon." 

“But, your Grace," the man went on, “you 
will please allow me to make up the fires?" 

“Oh, yes," the duke answered; “you may as 
well do that, and then you can leave me alone. 
I will let myself out." 

“I thank your Grace," said the man. And, 
with noiseless footsteps he went away. 

In two minutes three men were in the library 


2o8 


The Socialist 


and the dying fires were revived, until, as the 
dark came over London, a great red blaze threw 
odd contrasts of red light and shadow into the 
rich place. 

The men went away, and when they had gone 
the duke walked up and down the room for a 
minute or two, and then discovered, near the door 
which led into the hall, the switches which con- 
trolled the electric lights. 

He switched off the whole illumination, save 
only the one standard lamp upon the writing- 
table. Then he went back to his seat. 

He sat down and looked about him. The 
ruddy, cheerful light was all aroimd. Below his 
eyes upon the table the shaded electric-light lamp 
threw a brilliant circle of light upon the manu- 
scripts which he had been reading. Beyond 
everything was mysterious. 

The duke sighed, and once more took up the 
manuscript. 

“Yes,” he said to himself, “if every one was 
good. That is the whole point. Now I must 
finish this. But how extraordinary! I meet a 
man in my own college and make him librarian 
here, and he, too, turns out to be a Socialist, and 
to be writing a book upon Socialism. A book 
which, if I am not very much mistaken, will 
simply become the bible of all of them. Fabian 
Rose never told me that he knew Burnside! Of 
course, that is not very extraordinary, because it 
would not be in his way to tell me. It would 


Arthur Burnside’s Views 


209 


not have occurred to him. But how strange it is ! 
On all sides, on all occasions, Fate or Providence 
seems to have brought me among the ranks of the 
Socialists. Well, I ’ll just finish this.” 

The duke took up the manuscript once more. 
There was no rancour in his heart against the 
young man who, surrounded by the pomp and 
luxury of his employer’s property, was neverthe- 
less, and at the same moment, writing against 
people such as the duke was. 

The duke did not take the attacks very seriously. 
The forthcoming play had seemed to him rather 
futile. All that Rose, Mr. Conrad, and the group 
of their friends who met at the house in West- 
minster, had said certainly had opened the young 
man’s mind; but nevertheless he had not felt 
any of the real force of the attack as yet. 

He took up the manuscript and read the 
remaining pages. 

There was a cross-heading upon one, and it was 
this — 


‘‘THE REAL SOLUTION” 

“The real solution, let me finally say, is in- 
dubitably this: I have hinted at it throughout 
the pages of this work. I have tried to lead the 
mind of the reader up towards the discovery of 
my own conviction. Now I state it. 

“ If human nature was naturally good, as Jean 

Jacques Rousseau believed it to be, then there 
14 


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The Socialist 


would be no social problem. Human nature is 
not temperamentally good. It is temperament- 
ally bad. Therefore, before we can reorganise 
Society we must reorganise character. 

“And in what way is it possible to do this? 
Can it be done by Act of Parliament? Can it be 
done by articles in newspapers and reviews? 
Can it be done by the teaching of altruism at 
the hands of university settlements and propa- 
gandists? It cannot be done by any of these 
means. 

“There is only one way in which the individual 
mind can be reached, touched, and influenced 
so strangely and so completely that the influence 
will be permanent, and the life of the individual 
will be changed. 

“And that way is the Christian way. 

“We must do again, if we are to realise the 
ideals which bum in our hearts, what the Christian 
Church did in the old days of the Roman Empire, 
and was meant to do in all ages, by means of the 
Old Faith 'once and for all delivered to the 
saints.' In those dim, far-off days the historian 
knows that Christianity succeeded actually in 
creating a new middle-class — ^just what was 
needed — of poor men made richer, and rich men 
made poorer in one common brotherhood. Its 
motto was: For all who want work, work! For 
those who won't work, himger! But for the old 
and infirm, provision. And this the Church of 
Christ actually achieved, neither by denoimcing 


Arthur Burnside’s Views 


2II 


nor inculcating dogma, but by insisting on and 
carrying out in practice its own remarkable 
dogmas. It is not the denial of the Real Presence 
at the altar, it is not its affirmation, it is not the 
question of the validity of the apostolic suc- 
cession nor the denial of it, which will make it 
possible for an English world to save itself from 
the horrors of the present. 

“It will be simply this: That those who believe 
in Christ as the most inspired Teacher the world 
has ever seen, as God-made-Man, come into this 
world on a great mission of regeneration, that we 
shall see our opportunity. 

“Christianity and Socialism are inextricably 
entwined. Separate one from the other, as so 
many Socialists of nowadays are endeavouring 
to do, and one or the other — perhaps both — ^will 
fail of their high ideal, their splendid mission. 

“ Combine them, and success is real and assured 
We shall all, in that happy day, begin to realise 
the kingdom of heaven; to re-echo in this world 
the dim echo of the heavenly harmonies which 
may then reach us from the new Jerusalem.” 

The duke put down the manuscript, and with 
slow, grave steps left his great library, crossed 
the famous marble hall, and went up through 
the enclosure of his gardens into the roar and 
surge of Piccadilly. 

His face was curiously set and intent, as he 
walked to Lord Camborne’s, in Grosvenor Street. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE COMING OF LOVE 


HEY were dining quite alone at the Cam- 



1 homes* — the duke, the bishop, Lord Hayle, 

and Lady Constance. 

When he had changed and came down-stairs 
the duke went into the drawing-room. There 
were still a few minutes before dinner would be 
served. He found himself alone, and walked 
up and down the beautiful room with a curious 
physical, as well as mental, restlessness. He felt 
out of tune, as it were. The tremendous up- 
heaval in his life which he had lately experienced 
was not likely to be forgotten easily. He realised 
that, and he realised also — more poignantly per- 
haps at this moment than ever before — how rude 
a shock his life had experienced. All his ideas 
must be reconstructed, and the process was not 
a pleasant one. From the bottom of his heart 
he caught himself wishing that nothing had 
happened, that he was still without experience 
of the new sides of life, to which he had been 
introduced by such an extraordinary series of 
accidents. 

“I was happier before,*’ he said to himself 
aloud. And then, even as he did so, in a sud- 


212 


213 


The Coming of Love 

den flash he realised that, after all, these new 
experiences, disquieting as they were, were ex- 
ceedingly stimulating. Was it not better that 
a man should wake and live, even though it was 
disturbing, than remain always in a sleep and 
a dream, uninfluenced by actualities? 

Some men, he knew, held Nirvana to be the 
highest good. And there were many who would 
drink of the Waters of Lethe, could they but find 
them. But these were old or world-weary men. 
They were men who had sinned and suffered, and 
so desired peace. Or they were men whose 
bodies tormented them. He was young, strong, 
rich, and fortunate. He knew that, however 
much his newly-awakened brain might fret and 
perturb him, it was better to live than to stagnate 
even in the most gorgeous palace in the Sleeping 
Wood. 

The simile pleased him as it came to him. As 
a little boy Grimm's Fairy Tales had been a 
wondrous treasure-house, as they have been to 
nearly all the upper-class children of England. 
He saw the whole series of pictures in the eye of 
memory. The happiness was not won until the 
last scene, when everybody woke up! 

In his reverie his thoughts changed uncon- 
sciously, and dwelt with an unaccustomed effort 
of memory and appreciation upon the old Fairy 
Palace, which he had loved so in his youth. He 
remembered also that, one day, when of mature 
age, he had run over to Nice; he had gone with the 


214 


The Socialist 


Grand Duke Alexis and a few other young men 
to a cinematograph, for fun, after a dinner at the 
Hotel des Anglais, 

“Le Bois Dormant!’' How it had all come 
back! And also, what a wonderful thing a cine- 
matograph was! He remembered the flickering 
beauty of the girl in the strange mimic represen- 
tation of the Enchanted Castle! Certainly, then, 
he had watched the movement of the pictures 
with the interest and amusement of childhood. 
It was odd, also, that the whole thing should 
recur to him now. Was not he also awakening 
from a sleep, long enchanted for him by the cir- 
cumstances of his great wealth and rank? And 
then — ^the Beauty! 

He stopped in his walk up and down the great 
room, and his eyes fell upon a photograph in a 
heavy silver frame studded with uncut turquoises, 
which stood upon a little table. It was one of 
Madame Lallie Charles’s pictures, in soft grey 
platinotype, and it represented Lady Constance 
Camborne. The lovely profile, in its supreme and 
unfiawed beauty, came into his mood as the con- 
ception of the fantasy. 

Here, here indeed, was the Beauty! and no 
dream story, etched deep into the imagination, 
was ever fairer than this. 

He looked long and earnestly at the portrait, 
thinking deeply, now, of something which would 
mean more to his life than an3rthing else. 

Since he had been staying at the Bishop’s house 


215 


The Coming of Love 

he had seen much of the beautiful and radiant 
society girl. And all he had seen only confirmed 
him in his admiration for her beauty and her 
charm. 

Curiously enough, though, he remembered that 
he had found, as he stood there reviewing his ex- 
periences, that on some occasions his feelings 
towards his friend’s sister were singularly more 
passionate than at others. There were times 
when his blood pulsed through his veins, and his 
whole being rose up in desire to call this lovely 
girl his own. There were others when, on the 
contrary, he admired her from a standpoint which 
might even be called detached. Why was this? 
The alterations of feeling were quite plainly marked 
in his memory. Was it — and a sudden light 
seemed to flash in his mind — was it that when 
he had been with Mary Marriott his passion for 
Lady Constance had cooled for a time? He 
dismissed the thought impatiently, not liking it, 
angry that it should have come to him. 

Mary was as beautiful in her way as Lady 
Constance. Her charm was not so explicit, but 
perhaps it was as great. But, then, Mary Marriott 
was just an actress, and nobody. 

He crushed down the unwelcome thought, for, 
despite all his new knowledge and experience, 
the old traditions of his breed and training were 
strong within him. He was the Duke of Pad- 
dington, and his mind must not stray into strange 
paths! 


2i6 


The Socialist 


He was standing in the middle of the room, 
looking down, and frowning to himself. The 
subtle scent of the hot-house flowers which were 
massed in great silver bowls here and there min- 
gled strangely with the sense of warmth from 
the great fires which had a strangely drowsy 
influence upon him. 

Once more he was within the precincts of the 
Chateau dans le Bois Dormant. 

“A penny for your thoughts, duke!’' cut into 
his reverie. 

He started and looked up. 

Lady Constance stood before him, with her 
radiant smile and wonderful appeal. She swung 
a little fan of white feathers from one wrist- 
She wore a long, flowing black crepe de chine 
Empire gown, scintillating here and there with 
rich passementerie embroideries and jet orna- 
mentations. The dress was rich in its simplicity, 
graceful and flowing, it possessed the art that 
concealed art, and showed off to wonderful ad- 
vantage the wearer’s youthful beauty and glorious 
hair, the whiteness of her neck and arms against 
the shimmer of the black. It had been made by 
Worth, and only made more explicit the won- 
derful coronet of corn-ripe hair, surmounting a 
face as lovely as ever Raphael or Michael Angelo 
dreamt of and set down upon their canvases. 
She made an ensemble so sudden in its appearance, 
so absolutely overwhelming in its appeal, that 
for one of the first times in his life the duke was 


The Coming of Love 217 

taken aback and blushed and stammered like a 
boy. 

“I really do not know, ” he said at length. “I 
was in a sort of brown study, Lady Constance!” 

“Well,” she replied, “the offer of a penny, or 
should it be twopence? is still open; but if you are 
not going to deal, as the Americans say, explain 
to me the meaning of the words ‘brown study. ’ ” 

“I am afraid that is beyond me. Lady Con- 
stance,” he returned, smiling, and feeling at ease 
again. 

Just as he spoke Lord Hayle and the bishop 
entered, and they all went down to dinner. 

They sat at a small oval table, and every one 
was in excellent spirits. The duke’s troubles 
seemed to have left him. He felt exhilarated 
and stimulated, and a half-formed purpose in his 
mind grew clearer and clearer as the meal went on. 

He would ask the radiant girl opposite him to 
be his wife. 

He would ask her that very night if an oppor- 
tunity presented itself. She was utterly, over- 
whelmingly charming. There was nobody like 
her in society. She was as unique among the 
high-born girls of the day as Ellen Terry was in 
the height of her charm and beauty upon the 
stage, when Charles Reade wrote the famous 
passage about her. 

Yes, nothing could be better. She was like 
champagne to him — she was the most beautiful 
thing in the world — at the moment she was the 


2l8 


The Socialist 


most desirable. The ready influence of her talk 
and laughter stole into his brain. He was cap- 
tured and enthralled. He thought that this at 
last was Love. 

For he did not know, being a young man with 
great possessions, but few experiences, that Love 
does not come upon the wings of light and laugh- 
ter, but wears a sable mantle, shot through with 
fires from heaven. He had never loved, and so 
he did not know that, when the divine blessing 
of love is vouchsafed, there is a catch in the 
throat and the tears start into the eyes. 

He talked well and brilliantly, relating his 
experiences of that afternoon. 

“So you see,*’ he said, “I went into my great 
lonely house by a side door — the butler's door, I 
believe it is called as a matter of fact, and I found 
the library very warm and comfortable, and 
with the man I had appointed to be librarian 
gone. He apparently had just finished his day’s 
work of cataloguing. He is a scholar of my own 
college and a very decent chap I have found him. 
He wanted some paid work during the vacations 
to help him on towards his career at the bar —he 
is going to be called as soon as he possibly can. 
I understand that he is certain for a double first. 
Already he has got his first in mods, and he will 
get a first in history, too.” 

“I know the man,” Lord Hayle said. “Poor 
chap! He does not look too well provided with 
this world’s goods.” 


219 


The Coming of Love 

“But I thought every one at Paul’s,” Lady 
Constance said, “was well-to-do. Is it not quite 
the nicest college in Oxford?” 

“Oh, yes, Connie,” Lord Hayle replied, “but 
don’t you see, there are some scholarships upon 
the Foundation which make it possible for quite 
poor men to live at Paul’s. They are very much 
out of it, naturally. They cannot live with the 
other men, and so they form a little society of 
themselves. Still, it is a jolly good thing for them, 
I suppose,” he concluded rather vaguely, and 
with the young patrician’s slight contempt for, 
and lack of interest in people, of the class to 
which Arthur Burnside belonged. 

“Well, I like the man well enough — ^what I 
have seen of him, ” the duke continued. “But I 
made an extraordinary discovery to-day. Upon 
the writing-table where he had been working was 
some manuscript. It was obviously the last 
chapter of a book, and, by Jove! it was a book 
of the rankest Socialism!” 

“Socialism?” said the bishop. “My dear Pad- 
dington get rid of the young man at once. Such 
people ought not to be encouraged ! ” 

“Such people are very charming sometimes, 
bishop,” the duke replied. “You know that I 
probably owe my life to the chief Socialist of them 
all — Fabian Rose.” 

“Well, well,” the bishop replied, “I suppose it 
would be unfair to deprive this young Mr. Bum- 
side of his opportunity. At the same time, I 


220 


The Socialist 


must say it is extraordinary how these pernicious 
socialistic doctrines are getting abroad. Fabian 
Rose, and his friends, however personally charm- 
ing and intellectual they may be— and, of course, 
I do not deny that some of them are very clever 
fellows — are doing an amount of harm to the 
country that is incalculable.” 

“They are clever,” the duke returned, in a 
somewhat meditative voice; “they are, indeed, 
clever. This manuscript that I read was cer- 
tainly a brilliant piece of special pleading, and, 
as a matter of fact, I don’t quite understand 
what the answer to it can be. ’ ’ 

“It does seem hard,” Lady Constance said 
with a little sigh, “that we should have every- 
thing, and so many other people have nothing. 
After all, father, in the sight of God we are all 
equal, are we not?” 

The bishop smiled. “In the sight of God, my 
dear,” he answered, “we are certainly all equal. 
The soul of one man is as precious as the soul of 
another. But in this world God has ordained 
that certain classes should exist, and we must 
not presume to question His ordinance. Our 
Lord said: ‘Render unto Csesar the things that 
are Caesar’s.’ ” 

“But what I cannot see,” the duke broke in, 
“is why, when wealth is produced by labour, 
the people who produce it should have no share 
in it. Don’t think. Lord Camborne, that I am 
a Socialist, or infected in any way with socialistic 


221 


The Coming of Love 

doctrines. ” He spoke more rashly than he knew. 
“But I should like to know the economic answer 
to the things which Mr. Rose, and Mr. Conrad, 
and their friends told me when I was ill. 

“The answer,” replied the bishop, “is per- 
fectly simple. It is intellect, and not labour, that 
is the creator of wealth. Let me give you a little 
example.” 

As he spoke he placed his elbows upon the table, 
joined the tips of his fingers together, and looked 
at his young audience with a suave smile. 

“Let me instance the case of a saw!” 

“ A saw, father ? ' ’ Lady Constance said. ‘ ‘ What 
on earth has a saw to do with Socialism?” 

“Listen,” the bishop replied, “and I will tell 
you. If a saw had not been invented, planks, 
which are absolutely necessary for the construction 
of building, and, indeed, for almost all the con- 
veniences of modern life, must be split up out of 
the trunks of trees by means of wedges, a most 
clumsy and wasteful method. 

“Your labourer says that he produces wealth 
which the planks make. This, of course, is an 
absolute fallacy. Labour alone might rend the 
trunk of a tree into separate pieces, though, to be 
sure, it would be a difficult business enough. 
But only labour, working with tools, could splic 
up the trunk of a tree with wedges, saw it with 
a saw, or cut it with a knife. Don’t you see, my 
dear Connie, labour makes the noise, but it is 
intellect which is responsible for the tune. Men 


222 


The Socialist 


move by labour, but they only move effectually 
and profitably by intellect. Labour is the wind, 
intellect the mill. Though there is as much wind 
blowing about now as there was three thousand 
years ago, some of it now grinds corn, saves time, 
and increases wealth. This difference is due, 
not to the wind, but to the wiser utilisation of the 
wind through intellect. 

“And the same is true of labour. Without the 
inventions and the improvements of the few, 
labour would produce a bare subsistence for naked 
savages. It could not, however, produce wealth, 
because wealth is essentially something over and 
above a bare subsistence. A bare subsistence 
means consuming as fast as producing; and thus, 
all that labour does when not enabled to be 
efficient and profitable by the superior intelligence 
of the few. 

“So that the real truth is that wealth, as such, 
is something over and above a mere subsistence, 
and, so far from being due to labour, is rather due 
to that diminution of toil which enables things 
to be produced more quickly than they are con- 
sumed. But such diminution is due to the time- 
shortening processes, methods, and inventions of 
the few. The fact is that the general mass of 
men are of far too dull and clownish a character to 
do much for real advancement. 

“Any forward step which produces wealth is 
taken by somebody in particular, and not by 
everybody in general. 


223 


The Coming of Love 

“Of course it is easy enough to copy and profit 
by inventions and improvements after somebody 
else has made them.” 

The bishop stopped, and sipped his glass of 
Contrexeville, looking with a pleased smile at the 
young people before him. 

No one could talk with a more accurate and 
sustained flow of English than Lord Camborne. 
He knew it. The public knew it, and he knew 
that the public knew it. 

From some men such a sustained monologue 
would have been excessively tedious, even though 
the people to whom it was addressed were, like 
Miss Rose Dartle, “anxious for information.” 
In the bishop, however, there was such a bland- 
ness and suavity— he was such a handsome old 
man, and had cultivated the grand manner to 
such perfection — that he really was able, on all 
occasions, to indulge in his favourite amusement 
without boring anybody at all. He was, in short, 
one of the few men in Europe who could enjoy the 
pleasure of hearing himself talk at considerable 
length without an uneasy feeling that, in giving 
way to his ruling passion, he was not alienating 
friends. 

“I see, father!” Lady Constance said as the 
stately old gentleman concluded his rounded 
periods. But there was a slight note of indiffer- 
ence in her voice. The bishop did not hear it, 
Lord Hayle did not hear it, but the duke de- 
tected it with a slight sensation of surprise. His 


224 


The Socialist 


senses were sharpened to apprehend every in- 
flection in the voice of the girl he loved. And he 
wondered that she, apparently, was a little bored 
by the bishop’s explanation. 

He did not realise, being a young man, and one 
who had enjoyed a long minority, and had known 
but little of his parents, that, even though a 
prophet may sometimes have honour in his own 
country, his children do not always pay him 
his due meed of recognition when he is, so to 
speak, “unbuttoned and at home.” 

The duke had never heard the story of the 
angry old gentleman who was threatening two 
little boys, who had thrown some orange peel at 
him, with the imminent arrival of a policeman 
upon the other side of the road. “Garn!” said 
the little boys in chorus. “Why, that ’s farver!” 

The duke himself was intensely interested in 
the bishop’s logical and singularly powerful ex- 
position of socialistic fallacies. 

He had been uneasy for a long time now. He 
had had an alarming suspicion that the arguments 
of Fabian Rose and his companions were unan- 
swerable, and, on that very afternoon, he had been 
specially struck by the vigour and force of the 
concluding chapter of Arthur Burnside’s book. 

Now he was reinstated in all his old ideas. His 
mental trouble seemed to pass away like a dream. 
The world was as it had been before! The re- 
mainder of the dinner passed off as brightly and 
merrily as it had begun. Lord Camborne was a 


225 


The Coming of Love 

charming host. He could tell stories of the great 
people of the Victorian Era, for he had been upon 
intimate terms with all of them. As a young man 
he had sat with Lord Tennyson in a Fleet Street 
chop-house in the first days of the Saturday 
Review. He had been in Venice when Browning 
wrote that peautiful poem beginning — 

“ Oh, to be in England, now that April’s there! 

and had been cynically amused at the poet’s 
steadfast determination to remain in the City 
of Palaces until the cold weather of his native 
land was definitely over. 

He had been an honoured guest at the wedding 
of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and many 
years afterwards he had sat at the hospitable 
table of Sandringham, and had reminded the 
King and Queen of the scene of their marriage. 

It was very fascinating to the duke to hear 
these stories told with a delicate point and wit, 
and with the air which reminded the young man 
pleasantly of the fact that he, too, all his life, had 
been of these people, and was, indeed, a leader 
in England. 

Since his association with Fabian Rose — an 
association which pleased and interested him, 
he had, nevertheless, found a great diminution 
of his own importance. That sense had been so 
carefully cultivated from his very earliest years 
that the loss of it had occasioned him much 
uneasiness. Now it all seemed restored to him. 


226 


The Socialist 


He was in his own proper milieu, and as he looked 
constantly at Lady Constance Camborne, more 
and more he felt that here, indeed, was his des- 
tined bride. 

Lord Camborne, himself one of the astutest 
and shrewdest readers of character in England, 
gathered something of what was passing in the 
young man’s mind. He wanted the duke for a 
son-in-law. It was all so eminently suitable. 
The two young people were both exactly the two 
young people who ought to marry each other. 
The news of their engagement would, the bishop 
knew, be very welcome at Court, and society 
would acclaim it as the most fitting arrangement 
that could be made. 

“If I am not very much mistaken,” the old 
gentleman thought to himself, “the dear boy will 
ask Connie to marry him to-night. I must see if 
an opportunity cannot be arranged.” 

Lord Hayle, as it happened, was going to a 
bridge-party of young men, which was to be held 
in one of the card-rooms at the Cocoa Tree Club. 
He had asked the duke to accompany him, but 
the duke had already refused. 

“I hate cards, my dear Gerald, as you know; 
and, really, I am not feeling too fit to-night.” 

“Very well, then,” the bishop said, “we will 
smoke a cigar and have a chat, Paddington, and 
perhaps Connie will make some music for us? 
Sir William expressly asked me to see that you 
did not do too much, and went early to bed, after 


227 


The Coming of Love 

your terrible experiences, and I am not going to 
let you spoil your recovery.” 

“What a pompous old bore Sir William is,” 
the duke said, laughing. “But I suppose he 
really does know about what he says.” 

“The greatest doctor alive at present, ” said the 
bishop. 

Lady Constance did not leave the table after 
dessert, as they were all so intimate and at home. 
The young men were allowed to light their cigar- 
ettes, the bishop preferring to go to the library 
before he smoked. 

Suddenly Lady Constance, who had cracked an 
almond, held out the kernel to the duke. 

“Look,’ she said with almost childish glee, 
“this nut has two kernels. Now, let us have a 
phillipine. Will you, duke?” 

“Of course I will. Lady Constance,” he an- 
swered. “We must arrange all about it. I 
forget the rules. Is it not the first person who 
says ‘phillipine’ to-morrow morning who wins?” 

“That ’s it,” she answered. “Now, what are 
you going to give me, or what am I going to give 
you?” 

“Whatever you like,” said the duke. 

“Well, you choose first,” said Lady Constance. 

“I don’t quite know what I want,” said the 
duke. 

The bishop laughed softly. Things were going 
excellently well. 

“Surely, my dear boy,” he said, “even you — 


228 


The Socialist 


fortunate as you are — cannot say that there is 
nothing in the world that you don’t want?” 

“I know!” the duke answered suddenly, with 
a quick flush. “There is one thing which I want 
very much!” 

“Well, then, if it is not too expensive,” Lady 
Constance said, “and if you win, of course, I will 
give it to you. But what is it?” 

“I don’t think I will tell you now,” the duke 
replied. “We will wait and see the issues. But 
what do you want. Lady Constance?” 

“Well, I don’t know, either,” she said. “Oh, 
yes, I do. I saw Barrett’s the other day — ^the 
place in Piccadilly, you know — ^there were some 
delightful little ivory pigs. I should like a pig 
to add to my collection of charms. I meant to 
have bought one then, only I was rather in a 
hurry, and besides, your chain charms ought al- 
ways to be given to you if they are to bring you 
good luck.” 

“Very well, then, that is settled.” said the duke. 

“I don’t think it is at all fair, all the same,” 
she said, “not to tell me what your prize is to be 
if you win. ” 

“My resolution upon that point is inflexible. 
Lady Constance,” he answered. 

Then there was a curious momentary silence. 
Nobody looked at the other. Lord Hayle was 
thinking of the bridge-party to which he was 
going. The bishop had realised what the duke 
meant, and was wondering if his daughter had 


The Coming of Love 229 

realised it also. The duke wondered if, carried 
away by the moment, he had been a little too 
explicit. Lady Constance? What did Lady 
Constance wonder? 

The bishop saved the situation, if, indeed, it 
needed salvage. 

“Well,” he said, “shall we go into the drawing- 
room? Gerald, I know, wants to get away, and I 
and Paddington will be allowed to smoke, as 
there ’s nobody else there. Connie won't mind, 
I know.” 

“Oh, I sha’n’t mind a bit,” Lady Constance 
answered. “Father’s disgraceful when we ’re 
alone. He smokes everywhere. But the butler 
has invented a wonderful way of removing all 
traces of smoke in the air by the next morning. 
He makes one of the maids put down a couple 
of great copper bowls full of water, and they seem 
to absorb it all. Then, we will go.” 

Laughing and chatting together, they passed 
out of the dining-room and mounted to the 
drawing-rooms on the first floor. 

Lord Camborne and his guest sat by one of the 
fire-places and played a game of chess. Lady 
Constance was at the Erard, some distance away. 
Her touch of the piano was perfect, and she 
played brilliant little trifles, snatches from Greig 
or Chopin, and once she played a Tarantelle of 
Miguel Arteaga — a flashing, scarlet thing, instinct 
with the heat and spirit of the South. 

The bishop won the game of chess. He was, 


230 


The Socialist 


as a matter of fact, though the duke did not know 
it, one of the finest amateurs of the game then 
living. 

The duke was at his best an indifferent per- 
former. 

A minute or two after the game was over Mr. 
Westinghouse, the chaplain, came into the draw- 
ing-room. He had been dining in his own rooms 
that night, as he was very busy upon some special 
correspondence for the bishop. It was then that 
Lord Camborne saw his chance. 

“Westinghouse,' he said, “I think we had 
better go through those letters now, because some 
of them are most important. I am sure, Pad- 
dington, you will excuse me for a few minutes? 
Come along, Westinghouse, and we will get the 
whole thing done, and then we will come back, 
and my daughter will sing to us. " 

Together the two clergymen left the drawing- 
room. 

Lady Constance was still at the piano, playing 
soft and dreamy music to herself. 

The duke was standing in front of the fire 
looking out upon the great room lit with its softly- 
shaded electric lights. The harmonies of colour 
at that discreet and comfortable hour blended 
charmingly. It was a room designed by some one 
who knew what a beautiful room should be. The 
flowers standing about everywhere blended into 
the colour scheme. It was as lovely a place as 
could be found in London on that winter’s night. 


231 


The Coming of Love 

The duke stood there, tall, young-looking, and 
with that unmistakable aura which “personality” 
gives — motionless, and saying nothing. His head 
was a little bowed ; he was thinking deeply. 

Suddenly he left the hearth-rug, took three 
quick steps out into the middle of the room, and 
then walked up to the piano. He leant over it 
and looked at the beautiful girl, who went on play- 
ing, smiling up at him. 

“What are you playing?” he asked. 

“It is the incidental music of a little play called 
Villon by Alfred Calmour,” she said. “I don’t 
know who wrote the music in the first instance, 
but it was afterwards collected and welded into a 
sort of musical pictorial account of the play- 
You know about Villon, I suppose?” 

“He was a French medieval poet, wasn’t he? 
And rather a rascal, too?” the duke said. 

“Yes,” she replied. “The story is this: Villon 
lived with robbers and cut-throats, despite all 
his beautiful poetry. One night he and two 
friends, called Beaugerac and R6n6 de Montigny, 
decided to rob an old man, who was said to have 
a lot of money stowed away. His name was 
Gervais. 

“It was a bitter night in old Paris, and people 
said that wolves would be coming into the streets. 
The rich man’s house was on the outskirts or the 
town. Villon is to go to the house, knock at the 
door, and ask for shelter. Then, when he is once 
inside, he is to make a signal to Beaugerac and 


232 


The Socialist 


Montigny, who are to rush in and kill the old man, 
tie up his daughter, who lives with him, and 
take away the money. 

“Villon goes through the snow, and is admitted 
by the daughter, Marie. 

“The old man is there, and asks him to sit 
down and share their simple supper. Villon does 
so, and during the meal the old man says: ‘What 
is your name, stranger, who have come to us to 
share our meal this cold winter’s night?” 

“Taken unawares, Villon told the truth. ‘I, 
sir,’ he said, ‘am one Francois Villon, a poor 
master of arts of the University of Paris. ’ 

“ ‘Villon!’ says the girl suddenly. ‘Villon, 
the poet!’ 

“ ‘None other! At your service, mademoi- 
selle, ’ he answers, rising. 

“ ‘Villon!’ said the old man, ‘Villon, the poet! 
who associates with cut-throats and robbers? 
Begone from my house!’ 

“ ‘Sir,’ the poet answers, ‘I wish you a very 
good night. Mademoiselle, you have then read 
my poems?’ 

“ ‘Ay, and loved them truly,’ Mary answers 
in a whisper. 

“ ‘Begone!’ Gervais says once more. 

“Villon casts a last look at the girl and goes to 
the door and opens it. Flakes of snow are driven 
in by the wind as he does so. There is a sudden 
snarl of anger, a shriek of pain, and then a low 
gurgle. 


233 


The Coming of Love 

“Beaugerac and Montigny have watched their 
confederate through the window, sitting at supper, 
and have come to the conclusion that he has 
betrayed them. So Villon lies dying on the 
threshold as they rush away, frightened at what 
they have done, and the girl bends over him and 
places a crucifix upon his lips.” 

She stopped. “Now then,” she said, “I will 
play you the piece. It is marvellously descriptive 
of the little story of the play. ” 

Her face, as she looked up at him, was so sweet 
and lovely, so throbbing with the pity of the little 
tale, that he could hesitate no longer. 

“No,” he said, “you shall not play me the 
music now. Listen, oh, my dear, listen instead 
to my story, because I love you!” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS 

M ary Marriott sat alone in her Httle flat 
at the top of the old house in Bloomsbury* 
The new year had begun, bright and cold from its 
very first day until the present — eight days after 
its birth. 

The terrible fogs and depression of the old year 
had vanished as if they had never been. On 
such a morning as this was they seemed but a 
dim memory. 

And yet how much had happened during those 
weeks when London lay under a leaden pall. 
For ;^.'Iary at least they had been the most eventful 
weeks of her life. 

Everything had been changed for her. From 
obscurity she had been given an unparalleled 
opportunity of gaining fame — swift and com- 
plete- — a fame which some of the best judges in 
London told her was already assured. Nor was 
this all, stupendous though it was. A few weeks 
ago she had been as friendless and lonely a girl 
as any in London ; now she had troops of friends, 
distinguished, brilliant, and fascinating, and 
among all these kind people she was, as it were, 
upon a pedestal. They regarded her as a great 
234 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 235 


artisc, took her on trust as that; they regarded 
her also as a tremendous force to aid the victory 
of the Cause they had at heart. 

And there was more even than this. In the old 
days her art had always been her one ideal in life. 
The art of the theatre was ever3rthing to her. It 
was so still, but it was welded and fused with 
another ideal. Art for art’s sake, just that and 
nothing more, was welded and fused with some- 
thing new and uplifting. She saw how her art 
might become a means of definitely helping for- 
ward a movement which had for its object the 
relief of the down-trodden and oppressed, the 
doing away with poverty and misery, the ushering 
in — ^at last — of the Golden Age! She was to 
fulfil her artistic destiny, to do the work she 
came into the world to do, and at the same time 
to consecrate that work to the service of her 
sisters and brethren of England. 

In all the socialistic ranks there was no more 
enthusiastic convert than this lovely and brilliant 
girl. She was singing now as she sat in her little 
room, and the crisp, bright winter sunshine 
poured into it; crooning an old Jacobite song, 
though her eyes were fixed upon the typewritten 
manuscript of her part in the new play at the Park 
Lane Theatre. Her ivory brow was wrinkled a 
little, for she was deep in thought over a detail 
of her work' — should the voice drop at the end of 
that impressive line, or would not the excitement 
in which it was to be uttered give it a sharper 


236 


The Socialist 


and more staccato character? — it required think- 
ing out. 

The little sitting-room was not quite the same 
as it had been. Another bookshelf had been 
added, and it was filled with the literature of 
Socialism. On the top shelf was a long row of neat 
volumes bound in grey-green, the complete works 
of James Fabian Rose, presented to Mary by the 
author himself. All over the place masses of 
flowers were blooming, pale mauve violets from 
the Riviera, roses of sulphur and blood-colour 
from Grasse, striped carnations from Nice. Mary 
had many friends now who sent her flowers. 
They came constantly, and her tiny room was 
redolent of sweet odours. The walls of the room 
now bore legends painted upon them in quaint 
lettering. Mr. Conrad, the socialistic clergyman, 
Fabian Rose’s friend, was clever with his brush, 
and had indeed decorated his church with fresco 
work. He had painted sentences and socialistic 
texts upon the walls of Mary’s sitting- 
room. 

“The rich and the poor meet together; the 
Lord is the maker of them all, ” was taken from 
the Book of Proverbs and painted over the door. 
Upon the board over the fire, painted in black 
letter, was this quotation from Sir Thomas More: 
‘ ‘ I am persuaded that till property is taken away 
there can be no equitable or just distribution 
of things, nor can the world be happily governed, 
for so long as that is maintained the greatest and 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 237 


the far best of mankind will be still oppressed 
with a load of cares and anxieties. ” 

There were many other pregnant and pithy 
sayings upon the walls, and Mary, who used to 
speak of her cosy little attic as her “sanctum” 
or “nest,” now laughingly called it her “Pro- 
fession of faith. ” 

Mary also was not quite as she had been. A 
larger experience of life, new interests, new friends, 
and, above all, a new ideal had added to her grace 
and charm of manner, given fulness and maturity 
even to her beauty. More than ever she was 
marvellously and wonderfully alive, charged with a 
kind of radiant energy and force, a joyous power 
of true correspondence with environment which 
had made Conrad whisper to James Fabian Rose 
— one night in the house at Westminster: “For 
she on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk 
of Paradise.” Indeed, her experiences had been 
strangely varied and diversified during the last 
few weeks. 

Rose and his friends had spared nothing in the 
effort to make her a very perfect instrument which 
should interpret their ideas to the world at large. 
They had found their task not only easy, but full 
of intense pleasure. The girl was so responsive, 
so quick to mark and learn, of such an enthusi- 
astic and original temper of mind that her educa- 
tion on new lines was a specific joy, and their 
first hopes seemed already assured of fruition. 

It was now only a few days before the play 


238 


The Socialist 


Upon which so many hopes depended was to be 
produced at the Park Lane Theatre. 

Already the whole of London was in a fever of 
curiosity about it. Mr. Goodrich had begun the 
stimulation of public curiosity in the Daily Wirey 
Lionel Westwood had continued the work until 
the whole Press had interested itself and daily 
teemed with report, rumour, and conjecture. 

Almost everyone in the metropolis knew that 
something quite out of the ordinary, unpre- 
cedented, indeed, in the history of the theatre was 
afoot. Absolutely correct information there was 
none. Goodrich was reserving full and accurate 
details for the day before the production, when the 
Daily Wire promised a complete and authoritative 
statement of an absolutely exclusive kind. 

The three facts which had leaked out in more 
or less correct fashion, and which were responsible 
for much of the eager curiosity of London, were 
the three essential ones. The Socialist y which 
was announced as the title of the play, was known 
to be the first step in an organised attempt to use 
the theatre as a method of socialistic propaganda. 
It was also said that the play was indubitably 
the masterpiece of James Fabian Rose. This in 
itself was sufficient to attract marked in- 
terest. 

Secondly, every one seemed to be aware that 
a young actress of extraordinary beauty and 
talent had been discovered in the provinces and 
was about to burst into the theatrical firmament 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 239 

as a full-fledged star, a new Duse or Bernhardt, 
a star of the first magnitude. 

Again, there were the most curious rumours 
afloat in regard to the actual plot of the play. 
It was said that the whole scheme was nothing 
more or less than a virulent attack upon a certain 
great nobleman who owned a large portion of the 
West End of London and whose name had been 
much in the public mouth of late. No news- 
paper had as yet ventured to print the actual 
name, but it was a more or less open secret that 
the Duke of Paddington was meant. 

Mary had seen but little of the duke, and then 
she had thought his manner altered. She had 
met him once or twice at the Roses’ house, and 
he seemed to her to have lost his usual serenity. 
He was as a man on whose mind something weighs 
heavily. Restless, and with a certain appeal in 
his eyes. He looked, Mary reflected upon one of 
these occasions, like a man who had made some 
great mistake and was beginning to find it out. 
She had had little or no private talk with him 
except on one occasion, and then only for a 
moment. 

One afternoon the duke had taken her and Mrs. 
Rose to Paddington House in Piccadilly, and 
showed the two ladies the treasures of the historic 
place. It was an old-standing promise, dating 
from the time of his illness at Westminster, that 
he should do so. 

He had called for them in his motor-brougham, 


240 


The Socialist 


and th 3y had noticed his restlessness and depres- 
sion, both of which seemed accentuated. After 
a little while the young man’s spirits began to 
improve, and he had not been with them for half 
an hour when he became bright and animated. 
In some subtle way he managed to convey to 
Mary — and she knew that she was not mistaken — 
a sense that he was glad to see her, glad to be with 
her, that he liked her. 

When they were in the picture gallery Mrs. 
Rose had walked on a few yards to examine a 
Goya, and the two younger people were left alone 
for a minute. 

‘ ‘ I have secured my box for the first perform- 
ance of The Socialist j Miss Marriott,” the duke 
said. 

Mary flushed a little, she could not help it. “I 
am sure—” she began, and then hesitated as 
to what she should say. 

“You mean that I had better not come,” the 
duke answered with a smile. “Oh, I don’t think 
I shall mind Rose’s satire, judging from what I 
heard when the play was read, at any rate, and, 
besides, I quite understand that it is not I per- 
sonally who am shot at so much as that I am 
unfortunately a sort of typical target. The 
papers I see are full of it and all my friends are 
chaffing me.” 

Mary looked at him, her great eyes full of doubt 
and musing. There was something in his voice 
which touched her — a weariness, a sadness. “I 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 241 


don’t know ” she said “but I think it very likely 
that when you see the play as it is now you will 
find it hits harder than you expect. We are all 
very much in earnest. I think it is very good 
of you to come at all. I hope at any rate that 
you will forgive me my part in it. You and I 
live in very different ways of life, but since we 
have met once or twice I should not like you to 
think hardly of me. ” 

She spoke perfectly sincerely, absolutely natur- 
ally, as few people ever spoke to him. 

The duke’s answer had been singular, and Mary 
did not forget it. “Miss Marriott, ” he said in a 
voice which suddenly became intensely earnest 
and vibrated strangely, “let me say this, once 
and for all. Never, under any circumstances 
whatever, could I think hardly or unkindly of 
you. To be allowed to call myself your friend, 
if, indeed, I may be so allowed, is one of the 
greatest privileges I possess or ever can possess. ” 

He had been about to say more, and his eyes 
seemed eloquent with further words, when Mrs. 
Rose rejoined them. Mary heard him give a 
little weary sigh, saw the light die out of his eyes, 
and something strangely like resignation fall 
over his face. 

She had wondered very much at the time what 
were the causes of the recent changes in the duke’s 
manner, what trouble assailed him. When he 
had spoken to her in the picture gallery there had 
been almost a note of pleading in his voice It 


242 


The Socialist 


hurt her at the time, and she had often recalled 
it since, more especially as she had seen nothing 
of him for some time. He had not been to see 
the Roses, and had, it seemed, quite dropped out 
of the life of Mary and her friends. 

The girl was sorry, perhaps more sorry than she 
cared to admit to herself. Quite apart from the 
romance of their first meeting, without being in 
any way influenced by the unique circumstances 
of his rank and wealth, Mary liked the duke very 
much indeed. She liked him better, perhaps, 
than any other man she had ever met. It was 
always a pleasure to her to be in his society, and 
she made no disguise about it to herself. 

Mary put down the manuscript of the play and 
glanced at the little carriage clock, covered in red 
leather, which stood on the mantelshelf. 

It was eleven o’clock, and she had to be at the 
theatre at the half hour to meet Aubrey Flood 
and discuss some details of stage business with 
him. Then she was to lunch with the Roses at 
Westminster, after which she would return to 
the theatre and begin a rehearsal, which, with a 
brief interval for dinner, might last till any hour 
of the night. 

She put on her hat and jacket, descended the 
various flights of stairs which led to her nest in 
the old Georgian mansion, and walked briskly 
towards Park Lane. 

Mr. Flood had not yet arrived, she was told by 
the stage-door keeper, and thanking him she 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 243 


passed down a short stone passage and pushed 
open the swing door which led directly on to the 
stage itself. 

She was in a meditative mood that morning, 
and as her feet tapped upon the boards of the 
huge empty space she wondered if indeed she was 
destined to triumph there. Was this really to be 
the scene in which she would realise her life-long 

dreams or She put the ugly alternative 

away from her with a shudder and fell to con- 
sidering her part, walking the boards and taking 
up this or that position upon them in solitary 
rehearsal. 

The curtain was up and the enormous cavern 
of the auditorium in gloom, save only where a 
single pale shaft of sunlight filtered through a 
circular window in the roof. The brown holland 
which covered all the seats and gilding seemed 
like some ghostly audience. To Mary’s right, 
on the prompt side of the proscenium, a man 
stood upon a little railed-in platform some eight 
feet above the stage-floor level. He was an elec- 
trician, and was busy with the frame of black 
vulcanite, full four feet square and covered with 
taps and switches of brass. From here the 
operator would control all the lights of the stage 
as the play went on. A click, and the moon 
would rise over the garden and flood it wdth soft, 
silver light; a handle turned this way or that, 
and the lights of the mimic scene would rise or 
die and flood the stage with colour — colour 


The Socialist 


244 

fitted to the emotion of the moment, as the music 
of the orchestra would be fitted to it also — 
science invoked once more to aid the great illusion. 

Mary looked up at the man and the thought 
came to her swiftly. Yes, it was illusion, a 
strange and dream-like phantasma of the truth! 
She herself was a shadow in a dream, moving 
through unrealities, animated by art, so that 
the dream should take shape and colour, and the 
others — ^the real people — on the other side of the 
footlights should learn their lesson and take a 
forceful memory home. It was a strange and 
confusing thought, remote from actuality, as her 
mood was at that moment. She looked upwards 
into a haze of light, far away among the network 
of beams and ropes and hanging scenery of the 
“grid.” 

A narrow-railed bridge crossed the open space 
nearly forty feet above her. Two men in their 
shirt-sleeves were standing there talking, small 
and far away. They seemed like sailors on the 
yard of a ship, seen from the deck below. 

The girl had seen it all a thousand times before, 
under every aspect of shifting light and colour, 
but to-day it had a certain unfamiliarity and 
strangeness. She realised that she was not quite 
herself, her usual self, this morning, though for 
what reason she could not divine. Perhaps the 
strain of hard work, of opening her mind to new 
impressions and ideals, was beginning to tell a 
little upon her. Life had changed too suddenly 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 245 

for her, perhaps, and, above all, there was the 
abiding sense of waiting and expectation. Her 
triumph or her failure were imminent. One thing 
or the other would assuredly happen. But, 
meanwhile, the waiting was trying, and she longed 
for the moment of fruition — ^this way or that. 

Her reverie was broken in upon. With quick 
footsteps, quick footsteps which echoed on the 
empty stage, Aubrey Flood came up to her. He 
was wearing a heavy fur coat, the collar and cuffs 
of Persian lamb. His hat was of grey felt — a 
hard hat — for he had a little farm down at Pinner, 
where he went for week-ends, and affected some- 
thing of the country gentleman in his dress. 

Mary was glad to see him at last, not only be- 
cause she had been waiting for him to discuss 
business matters, but because a friendly face at 
this moment cut into her rather weary and 
dreamy mood, and brought her back to the life 
of the moment and the movement of the day. 

“Oh, here you are!” she said gladly. “I’ve 
been waiting quite a long time, and I Ve been in 
the blues, rather. The empty theatre, when one 
is the only person in it, suggests horrible possi- 
bilities for the future, don’t you think?” 

He answered her quickly. “ No, I don’t think 
anything of the sort. Mary, you are getting into 
that silly nervous state which comes to so many 
girls before the first night, the first important 
night, I mean. You must not do it, I won’t allow 
it, I won’t let you. You ’re overstrained, of 


246 


The Socialist 


course. We ’re all very much over-strained. 
So much depends upon the play. But, all the 
same, we all know that everything is sure and 
certain. So cheer up, Mary.” 

Flood had called her by her Christian name 
for two weeks now. The two had become friends. 
The celebrated young actor-manager and the 
unknown provincial actress had realised each 
other in the kindliest fashion. The girl had never 
met a cleverer, more artistic, nor more chivalrous 
man in the ranks of her profession, and Flood 
himself, a decent, clean-living citizen of London, 
had not grasped hands with a girl like Mary for 
many months. 

Mary Marriott sighed. “Oh,” she said, “it ’s 
all very well for you to talk in that way. But 
you know, Mr. Flood, how all of you have poured 
the whole thing on to me, as it were. You have 
insisted that I am the pivot of it all, and there 
are moments when it is too overwhelming and 
one gets tired and dispirited.” 

“ Don’t talk nonsense,” he answered quickly. 

“All right, then, I won’t,” she replied. “ Now 
let ’s go into the question of that business in the 
second act. My idea is, that Lord Winchester 
should ” 

He cut her short with a single exclamation. 
“ That ’s a thing we can talk over later, ” he said. 
“At the moment I have something more im- 
portant to say.” 

Mary stopped. Flood’s voice was very earnest 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 247 


and urgent. She felt that he had discovered 
some flaw in the conduct of the rehearsals, that 
some very serious hitch had occurred. 

Her voice was anxious as she said that they 
had better discuss the thing immediately. “I 
hope that it’s nothing very serious,” she said, 
alarmed by the disturbance in his voice. “I 
am going to lunch with the Roses, and as you ’re 
late I ought to be off in a few minutes. But 
what ’s gone wrong?” 

“As yet,” he replied, “nothing has gone wrong 
at all.” 

“I hope nothing will,” she said, by now quite 
alarmed by his tone. “Please tell me at once.” 

“I can’t tell you here,” he replied. “Would 
you mind coming into my room?” 

She followed him, wondering. 

They went into Flood’s private room. It 
faced west, and the winter sun being now high 
in the heavens did not penetrate there at this 
hour. The fire was nearly out, only a few cinders 
glowed with their dull black and crimson on the 
hearth. 

“How cheerless!” Mary said as she came into 
the room. 

With a quick movement Aubrey Flood turned 
to the wall. There was a succession of little 
clicking noises, and then the electric light leaped 
up and the place was full of a dusky yellow 
radiance. 

“That ’s better,” he said in a curiously muffled 


248 


The Socialist 


voice, “though it’s not right. Somehow I 
know it ’s not right. No, I am sure that it ’s not 
right!” 

His voice rang with pain. His voice was full 
of melancholy and pain as he looked at her. 
Never, in all his stage triumphs in the mimic 
life he could portray so skilfully and well, had 
his mobile, sensitive voice achieved such a note 
of pain as now. 

Suddenly Mary knew. 

“What do you mean, Mr. Flood?” she said 
faintly. 

He turned swiftly to her, his voice had a note 
of passion also now. His eyes shone, his mobile 
lips trembled a little — ^they seemed parched and 
dry. 

“Mary,” he said, “I love you as I have never 
loved any one in the world before, and I am 
frightened because I see no answering light in 
your eyes, they do not change when you see 
me.” 

He paused for a moment, and then with a 
swift movement he caught her by the hands, 
drew her a little closer to him, and gazed steadily 
into her face. His own was quite changed. She 
had never seen him like this before. It was as 
if for the first time a mask had been suddenly 
peeled away and the real man beneath revealed. 
He had made love to Mary during rehearsals, he 
was her lover in the play of James Fabian Rose — 
but this was quite different. 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 249 

He spoke simply without rhetoric or bombast. 
He was a man now, no longer an actor. 

“Oh, my dear!” he said, “I have no words to 
tell you how I love and reverence you. I am 
not playing a part now, I ’m not a puppet mouth- 
ing the words of another man any longer, and I 
can’t find expression. I can only say that my 
whole heart and soul are consumed by one wish, 
one hope. It is you I Ever since I first met you 
at Rose’s house I have watched you with grow- 
ing wonder and growing love. Now I can keep 
silence no longer. Dear, do you care for me a 
little? Can you ever care for me? I am not 
worthy of one kind look from your beautiful 
eyes, I know that well. But I am telling you the 
truth when I say that I have not been a beast 
as so many men in the profession are. You 
know how things sometimes are with actors, 
every one knows. Well, I ’ve not been like that, 
Mary; I ’ve kept straight, I can offer you a clean 
and honest love, and though such things would 
never weigh with you, I am well-to-do. My 
position on the stage, you know. I am justified 
in calling it a fairly leading one, am I not? We 
should have all the community of tastes and 
interests that two people could possibly have. 
We love the same art. My dear, dear girl, my 
beautiful and radiant lady, will you marry 
me? Will you make me happiest of living 
men?” 

His urgent, pleading voice dropped and died 


250 


The Socialist 


away. He held her hands still. His face shone 
with an earnestness and anxiety that were almost 
tragic. 

Mary was deeply moved and stirred. No man 
had ever spoken to her like this before. Her life 
had been apart from an3d:hing of the kind. All 
her adult years had been spent upon the stage 
and touring about from one place to another in 
the provinces. She had always lived with an- 
other girl in the company, and had always en- 
joyed the pleasant, easy bohemian camaraderie 
with men that the touring life engenders. Men 
had flirted with her, of course. There had been 
sighs and longings, equally, of course, and now 
and then, though rarely, she had endured the 
vile persecution of some human beast in authority, 
a manager, or what not. But never had she 
heard words like these before, had seen an honour- 
able and distinguished gentleman consumed with 
love of her and offering her himself and all he had, 
asking her to be his wife. He was saying it once 
more: “Mary, will you be my wife?’^ 

She trembled as she heard the words, trembled 
all over as a leaf in the wind. It was as though 
she had never heard it before, it came like a 
chord of sweet music. 

In that moment dormant forces within her 
awoke, things long hidden from herself began to 
move and stir in her heart. A curtain seemed to 
roll up within her consciousness, and she knew 
the truth. She knew that it was for this that 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 251 

she had come into the world, that the holy sacra- 
ment of marriage was her destined lot. 

Yet, though it was the passionate pleading of 
the man before her which had worked this change 
and revealed things long hidden, it was not to 
him that her heart went out. She thought of no 
one, no vision rose in her mind. She only knew 
that this was not the man who should strike upon 
the deep chords of her being and wake from them 
the supreme harmonies of love. 

She was immensely touched, immensely flat- 
tered, full of a sisterly tenderness towards him. 
Affection welled up in her. She wanted to kiss 
him, to stroke his hair, to say how sorry she was 
for him. She had never had a brother, she would 
like a brother just like this. He was simple and 
good, true, and in touch with the verities of life — 
down under the veneer imposed upon him by 
his vocation and position upon the stage. 

She answered him as frankly and simply as he 
had spoken to her; she was voicing her thoughts 
no more, no less. Almost instinctively she called 
him by his Christian name. She hardly knew 
that she did it. He had bared his soul to her 
and she felt that she had known him for years 
and had always known him. 

“It ’s not possible in that way, Aubrey,’’ she 
said. “I know it isn’t, I can’t give you any 
explanation. There is no one else, but, somehow, 
I laiow it within me. But, believe me, I do care 
for you, I honour and respect you. I like you 


252 


The Socialist 


more than almost any one I have ever met. I 
will be your friend for ever and ever. But what 
you ask is not mine to give. I can only say that.’' 
The pain on his face deepened. “I knew,” he 
answered sadly, “ I knew that is what you would 
say, and, indeed, who am I that you should love 
me? But you said” — he hesitated — ^“you said 
that there was no one else. ” 

She nodded, hardly trusting herself to speak, 
for his face was a wedge of sheer despair. ‘ ‘ Then, ’ ’ 
he said suddenly, more to himself than to her, 
“then perhaps some day I may have another 
chance. ” He dropped her hands and half turned 
from her. “God bless you, dear, ” he said simply, 
“and now let us forget what has passed for the 
present and resume ordinary relations again. 
Remember that both for the sake of our art, our 
own reputations, and the cause we believe in. 
The Socialist has got to be a success.” 

In a minute more they were both eagerly dis- 
cussing the technical theatre business which was 
the occasion of their meeting. Both found it a 
great relief. 

Almost before they had concluded Flood was 
called away, and Mary, looking at her watch, 
found that she might as well go down to West- 
minster at once, for though the Roses did not 
lunch until a quarter before two there was no 
object in going back to her flat. She went out 
into the surging roar of Oxford Street at high 
noon, momentarily confusing and bewildering 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 253 


after the gloom and semi-silence of the empty 
theatre. Her idea had been to walk through the 
park, but when she began she found that the 
scene through which she had passed had left her 
somewhat shaken. She trembled a little, her 
limbs were heavy, she could not walk. 

She got into a hansom and was driving down 
Park Lane, thinking deepl}^ as she rolled easily 
along that avenue of palaces. She knew well 
enough that in a sense a great honour had been 
done her. There was no one on the stage with 
a better reputation than Aubrey Flood. He was 
a leading actor ; he was a gentleman against whom 
nothing was said; he was rich, influential, and 
charming. Sincerity, was the keynote of his life. 
Hundreds of girls, as beautiful and cleverer than 
she was — so she thought to herself — would have 
gladly accepted all he had to offer. She was 
a humble-minded girl, entirely bereft of egotism 
or conceit, and she felt certain that Aubrey Flood 
might marry almost any one for choice. 

She had always liked him, now she did far more 
than that. A real affection for him had blossomed 
in her heart, and yet it was no more than that. 
Why had she not accepted him? She put the 
answer away from her mind; she would not, dare 
not, face it. 

There are few people with sensitive minds who 
take life seriously, who value their own inward 
and spiritual balance, that have not experienced 
— at some time or another — this most serious 


254 


The Socialist 


of all sensations recurring within the hidden 
citadel of the soul. 

A thought is born, a thought we are afraid of. 
It rises in the subconscious brain, and our active 
and conscious intelligence tells us that one thing 
is there. We are aware of its presence, but we 
shun it, push it away, try to forget it. We exer- 
cise our will and refuse to allow it to become real 
to us. It was thus with Mary now. 

Mrs. Rose met her in the hall of the beautiful 
and artistic little house in Westminster. She 
kissed the girl affectionately. 

“I shall be busy for half an hour, dear,’' she 
said; “household affairs, you know. Fabian is 
out ; he went to breakfast with Mr. Goodrick this 
morning to discuss the Press campaign in con- 
nection with the play. But he ’ll be back to 
lunch, and he ’ll go with you to the rehearsal this 
afternoon. Take your things off in my room and 
go into the drawing-room. The weekly papers 
have just come, and there are all these. I will 
send the morning papers up, too.” 

Mary did as she was bid. The beautiful draw- 
ing-room was bright and cheery, as the sunlight 
poured into it and a wood fire crackled merrily 
upon the hearth. 

She sat down with a sigh of relief. Unwilling 
to think, yet afraid of the restful silence which 
was so conducive to thought, she took up one 
of the morning papers and opened it. Her eyes 
fell idly upon the news column for a moment, and 


A Lover, and News of Lovers 255 


then she grew very pale while the crisp sheet 
rustled in her hands. 

She saw two oval portraits. One was of the 
Duke of Paddington, an excellent likeness of the 
young man as she knew him and had seen him 
look a thousand times. 

The second portrait, which was joined and 
looped to the first by a decoration of true lover’s 
knots, was that of a girl of extraordinary and 
patrician beauty. Underneath this was the name, 
“The Lady Constance Camborne.” 

She read: “We are able to announce the happy 

intelligence that a marriage has been arranged 

when the paper fell from her fingers upon the 
carpet. 

Mary knew now. The hidden thought had 
awakened into full and furious life. Her pale 
face suddenly grew hot with shame and she 
covered it wdth her hands. When she even- 
tually picked up the paper and finished the 
paragraph she found that the duke’s engagement 
had been a fact for a month past, but was only 
now formally announced. 


CHAPTER XIX 


TROUBLED WATERS 



‘HE Duke of Paddington was walking up the 


A broad avenue of St. Giles’s at Oxford, going 
towards “The Corn.” The trees of the historic 
street were all bare and leafless in the late winter 


sun. 


To his right was the Pusey House, headquarters 
of the High Church Party in the Church of Eng- 
land. 

To his left was the fagade of St. John’s College, 
while beyond it was the side of Balliol and the 
slender spire of the Martyrs’ Memorial. Farther 
still, as a background and completion of the view, 
was the square Saxon tower of St. Michael’s. It 
was a grey and sober loveliness that met his eye, 
a vista of the ancient university which came 
sharply and vividly to the senses in all the appeal 
of its gracious antiquity, unmixed with those 
sensuous impressions that obtain when aU the 
trees are in leaf and the hot sun of summer bathes 
everything in a golden haze. 

The Duke had been to see Lord Hayle, who was 
lying in the Acland Home with a broken leg. 
Lord Camborne’s son had been thrown from his 
horse on Magdalen Bridge — a restive young cob 


Troubled Waters 


257 


which had been sent up from the episcopal stables 
at Carlton, and been startled by the noisy passage 
of an automobile. 

Term was in full swing again, and the viscount 
lay in the private hospital, unable to take any 
part in it, while the visits of the duke and others 
of his friends were his only relaxation. 

The duke was dressed in the ordinary Norfolk 
jacket and tweed cap affected by the imder- 
graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. He was 
smoking a cigarette and walking at a good pace. 
Once or twice a man be knew passed and nodded 
to him, but he hardly noticed them. His forehead 
was wrinkled in thought and his upper lip drawn 
in, giving the whole face an aspect of perplexity 
and worry. 

Probably in the whole university there was 
not, at that moment, a young man more thor- 
oughly out of tune with life and with himself than 
he was. He was probably the most envied of all 
the undergraduates resident in Oxford. He was 
certainly placed more highly than any other 
young man, either in Oxford, or, indeed, in 
England. Save only members of the Blood 
Royal, no one was above him. He was, to use 
a hackneyed phrase, rich beyond the dreams of 
avarice. His health was perfect, and he was 
engaged to the most beautiful girl in the United 
Kingdom. 

He presented to his friends and to the world 
at large the picture of a youth to whom the gods 


258 


The Socialist 


had given everything within their power, given 
with a lavish hand, full measure, pressed down 
and running over. 

And he was thoroughly unhappy and disturbed. 

His friends, the young aristocrats of Paul’s, had 
long noticed the change in him. It had become 
an occasion of common talk among them, and no 
one was able to explain it. The general theory — 
believed by some and scouted by others — was 
that the duke was still suffering from the shocks 
of the terrible railway accident outside Paddington 
Station and his torture and imprisonment at the 
hands of the vile gang in the West End slum. 

It was thought that his mind had not recovered 
tone, that his hours of melancholy and brooding 
were the result of that. Men tried to cheer him 
up, to take him out of himself, but with poor 
success. His manner and his habits seemed 
utterly changed. The members of the gang who 
had kidnapped and imprisoned the duke had been 
tried at the sessions of the Central Criminal 
Court and were sentenced to various lengthy terms 
of imprisonment. The duke had gone up from 
Oxford to be present at the trial. When he 
returned he refused to speak of it, but his friends 
learnt from the daily papers that the ringleader 
of the criminals had been sent into penal servi- 
tude for no less than twenty years, and that, by 
special permission of the judge, the duke had 
spent several hours with the prisoner directly 
sentence had been pronounced. 


Troubled Waters 


259 


Such a proceeding was so utterly unlike the 
duke, and his reticence about it was so complete, 
that every one was lost in wonder and conjecture. 

And there was more than this: during term 
the duke hardly entertained at all. His horses 
were exercised by grooms, and he took no part 
in social life. And worse than all, from the point 
of view of his Oxford friends, he began to frequent 
sets of whose existence he had hardly been aware 
before. This shocked the “bloods” of the ’Var- 
sity more than anything else. It was incredible 
and alarming. Had the duke been a lesser man 
he himself would have been dropped. Few out- 
siders are aware of, or can possibly realise, the 
extent to which exclusiveness and a sort of 
glorified snobbery prevails in certain circles at 
Oxford. Social dimensions are marked with a 
rigidity utterly unknown elsewhere. Even the 
greater Society of the outside world is not so 
exclusive. 

It was known that the duke was in the habit 
of taking long walks alone with a poor scholar 
of his own college. The man was of no birth at all, 
a “rank outsider,” called Burnside. The duke 
was constantly being seen with this man and 
with others of his friends — fellows ' who wore 
black clothes and thick boots and never played 
any games. It was nothing less than a scandal! 

Now and then men who went to the duke’s 
rooms would find strange visitors from London 
there, people who might have come from another 


26 o 


The Socialist 


world, so remote were they in appearance, speech, 
and mode of thought. And the worst of it all 
was that the duke kept his own counsel, and 
nobody dared to comment upon the change in 
his hearing. There was a reserve and dignity 
about him, a sense of power and restrained force 
which chilled the curiosity of even intimate 
friends. They all felt that something ought to 
be done ; nobody knew how to set about it. Then, 
unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. 
Lord Hayle was thrown from his horse and was 
taken to the private hospital with a broken leg. 
As soon as it was allowed all the men of his set — 
the exclusive set to which he and the duke be- 
longed — paid him frequent visits. Lord Hayle 
himself had noted with growing dissatisfaction 
and perplexity the marked change in his future 
brother-in-law. He saw that John was moody 
and preoccupied, seemed to have some secret 
trouble, and was changing all his habits. This 
distressed and grieved him, but he had said 
nothing of it to his sister or any one else, hoping 
that it was but a passing phase. Moreover, he 
had only seen the commencement of the change. 
Away from ever3nihing in the hospital he had 
not been able to witness the full development. 

His friends enlightened him; they told him 
everything in detail, and urged him to remon- 
strate. 

“It will come better from you than from any 
one else, Hayle,” they said. “You are Padding- 


Troubled Waters 


261 


ton’s closest friend, and he ’s going to marry your 
sister. It really is your duty to try and bring him 
back to his old self and to find out what really is 
the matter with him.” 

Lord Hayle had taken this advice to heart, and 
on this very afternoon he had opened the whole 
question. 

His remarks had been received quietly enough — 
the two men were friends who could not easily 
become estranged — but the interview had been 
by no means a satisfactory one. “It ’s perfectly 
true, Gerald,” the duke had said. “I am going 
through a period of great mental strain and dis- 
turbance. But I can’t tell you anything about 
it. It is a mental battle which I must fight out 
for myself. No one can possibly help me, not 
even you or Constance. All I can tell you is that 
there is absolutely nothing in it that is in any 
way wrong. I am in no material trouble at all. 
Let me go my own way. Some day you shall 
know what there is to know, but not yet. ” 

The duke walked down the busy “Corn” 
towards Carfax and the entrance to the “High” 
— ^the most beautiful street in Europe. He was 
on his way to his rooms in Paul’s. The interview 
with Lord Hayle had disturbed him. It had 
brought him face to face with hard fact, insistent, 
recurring fact, which was always present and 
would not be denied. 

His mind was busy as a mill. The thoughts 
churned and tossed there like running water 


262 


The Socialist 


under the fans of a wheel. There was no peace 
anywhere, that was the worst of all. 

And to-day, of all days, was important. It 
was the early afternoon of the evening on which 
the play called The Socialist was to be presented 
at the Park Lane Theatre. He had obtained 
special permission to go to town by the evening 
train — ^there would be no accident this time — 
and he knew that to-morrow, whether the play 
was a success or a failure, his name would be in 
every one’s mouth. 

All Oxford, all London, all Society was talking 
about the play that would see light in a few 
hours. The public interest in it was extraor- 
dinary; his own interest in it was keen and fierce, 
with a fierceness and keenness a thousand times 
more strenuous than any one knew. He did not 
fear that he, as a typical representative of his 
class and order, would be caricatured or held up 
to economic execration. Even if it were so — 
and he was aware of Rose’s intention — he did 
not care twopence. He feared nothing of that 
sort. He feared that he might become convinced. 

For it had come to that. 

A complete change and houleversement of opinion 
and outlook is not nearly so long a process as 
many people are apt to suppose. To some natures 
it is true that conviction, or change of conviction, 
comes slowly. In the case of the majority this is 
not . so. With many people a settled order of 
mind, a definite attitude towards life, a fixed 


Troubled Waters 


263 


set of principles, are the results of heredity or 
environment. A man thinks in such-and-such 
a way, and is content with thinking in such-and- 
such a way simply because the other side of the 
question has not been presented to him with 
sufficient force. A Conservative, for example, 
hears Radical arguments, as a rule, through the 
medium of a Conservative paper, with all the 
answers and regulations in the next column. 

It had been thus with the Duke of Paddington. 
He had lived a life absolutely walled-in from 
outside influences, Eton and Oxford, an intensely 
exclusive circle of that society which surrounds 
the Court. He had been shut away from every- 
thing which might have turned his thoughts to 
the larger issues of life. 

Enlightenment, knowledge, had come suddenly 
and had come with irresistible force. Reviewing 
the past weeks, as the duke sometimes did with a 
sort of bitter wonder, he dated the change in his 
life from the actual moment when he was crushed 
down into the swift unconsciousness when the 
railway accident occurred outside Paddington 
Station. Since then his mental progress had 
been steady and relentless. James Fabian Rose, 
Mr. Goodrich, Peter Conrad, the parson, were 
all men of extreme intellectual power. Arthur 
Burnside also was unique in his force and grip, 
his vast and ever-increasing knowledge. And 
Mary Marriott — Mary, the actress! — ^the duke 
thought as little of Mary Marriott as he possibly 


264 


The Socialist 


could — she came into his thoughts too often for 
the peace of a loyal gentleman pledged irrevocably 
to another girl. 

All these forces, the cumulative effect of them, 
had been at work. The duke found himself at the 
parting of the ways. Day by day he deserted all 
the friends of his own station and all the amuse- 
ments and pleasures which had always employed 
his time before. For these he substituted the 
society of Burnside. He went for long walks 
with the scholar. He drove him out in his great 
Mercedes automobile; they talked over coffee 
during late midnights. 

An extraordinary attachment had sprung up 
between the two young men. They were utterly 
different. One was plebeian and absolutely poor 
the other was a hereditary peer of England and 
wealthier than many a monarch. Yet they were 
fast friends, nevertheless. Nothing showed more 
completely the entire change of the duke’s atti- 
tude than this simple fact. All his prejudices 
had disappeared and were overcome. Regard- 
less of the opinions of his friends, forgetful of his 
rank and state, he was a close friend of Burnside. 

Their relations were peculiar. The duke had 
offered his companion anything and everything. 
He proposed to make the scholar independent 
of struggle for the rest of his life. He pressed 
him to accept a sum of money which would for 
ever free him from sordid cares and enable his 
genius to have full play. 


Troubled Waters 


265 


Burnside had absolutely refused anything of 
the sort. He was delighted to accept the sum 
which the duke was paying him for his work as 
librarian of Paddington House. It meant every- 
thing to him. But he worked for it; he knew 
that his work was valuable, and he accepted its 
due wages. 

Apart from that, apart from a mutual attrac- 
tion and liking which was astonishing enough 
to both of them, and which was, nevertheless, very 
real and deep, the relations of the two were simply 
this: the poor young man of the middle classes, 
the man of brilliant intellect, was the tutor. 

The duke was a simple pupil, and day by day 
he was learning a lesson which would not be 
denied. 

The duke arrived at St. Paul’s College and 
crossed the quadrangle into the second quad., 
where the “new buildings” were. He went up 
the oak stairs to his rooms. 

His scout. Gardener — ^the discreet and faithful 
Gardener! — was making up the fire in the larger 
of the two sitting-rooms as the duke came in. 

“The kit-bag and the suit cases are already 
packed, sir,” he said. “The valet asked me to 
say so. You will remember that you have given 
him the afternoon off. Wilkins will be at the 
station ten minutes before the train starts. Will 
you kindly tell me where you will be staying, sir, 
so that the porter can send the late post letters 
up to reach you at breakfast?” 


266 


The Socialist 


“ Oh, I shall be at the Ritz, ” the duke answered, 
“ but you ’d better send the letters on to me your- 
self, Gardener.’' 

“At the Ritzf Very good, your Grace,” the 
privileged old servant replied. “I saw in the 
Telegraph that Lord Camborne and her ladyship 
were down at Carlton, so I thought as you ’d be 
staying at a hotel, sir. But I ’m sorry to say 
that I must leave the matter of the letters to the 
porter, because, your Grace, I have leave of absence 
from the bursar to-night, and I am going to 
London myself.” 

“Oh, well, I hope you’ll enjoy yourself. Gar- 
dener,” the duke answered. “If you go to the 
writing-table you will find a pocket-book with 
five five-pound notes in it. You can take one, 
and it will pay your expenses. You ’re going on 
pleasure, I suppose?” 

Gardener went to the writing-table, expressing 
well-bred thanks. “ Certainly your Grace is most 
kind,” he said. “I hardly know how to thank 
you, sir. You ’ve been a very kind master to me 
ever since you ’ve been up. I don’t know if 
you ’d call it pleasure exactly, but I ’m going up 
to London to see this abominable play, begging 
your pardon. I ’m going to do the same as your 
grace is going to do. I ’m going to see this here 
Socialist, In a sense I felt it a kind of duty, sir, to 
go up and make my bit of a protest — ^if hissing will 
do any good— especially so, sir, since all the papers 
are saying that it ’s an attack upon your Grace.” 


Troubled Waters 


267 


The duke was about to reply, somewhat touched 
and pleased by the old fellow’s interest, when 
Burnside came into the room, walking very 
quickly and with his face flushed. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said, “ for bursting in 
like this, but I think you arranged to walk to 
Iffley with me, didn’t you? and I have some 
specially extraordinary news to tell you!” 

The old scout, who did not in the least approve 
of poor scholars of Paul’s becoming the intimate 
friends of dukes, withdrew with a somewhat 
grim smile. 

“ What is it, Burnside?” the duke said. “ You 
seem excited. Good news, I hope?” 

“Tremendously good!” said the young man in 
the black clothes, his keen, intellectual face lit up 
like a lamp. “An uncle of mine, who emigrated 
to Canada many years ago as quite a poor labourer, 
has died and left a fortime of over three hundred 
thousand pounds. I never knew him, and so I 
can’t pretend to feel sorry for his death. To cut 
a long story short, however, I must tell you that 
I am the only surviving heir, and that I have 
heard this morning from solicitors in London 
that all this money is absolutely mine!” 

The duke’s face became animated, he was 
tremendously pleased. “I’m so glad,” he said. 
“ I can’t tell you how glad I am, Burnside. Now 
you will be quite safe. You will be able to com- 
plete your destiny unhampered by squalid worries. 
And you won’t owe your good fortune to any one.” 


268 


The Socialist 


“I’m so glad that you see it in that way,” 
Burnside replied. “Three hundred thousand 
pounds! Think of it, if money means anything 
to a man of millions, like you. Why, it will mean 
everything to the cause of Socialism. Fabian 
Rose will go mad with excitement when I put 
the whole lot into his hands to be spent for the 
cause!” 


CHAPTER XX 


THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST 

T he duke went to the theatre early. 

The play was announced for nine o’clock, 
but he was in his box, the stage box on a level 
with the stalls, by half-past eight. A whole 
carriage had been reserved for him from Oxford 
to London, and a dinner basket had been put in 
for him. He wished to be entirely alone, to 
think, to adjust his ideas at a time of crisis un- 
paralleled in his life before. 

A motor-brougham had met him at Paddington 
and taken him swiftly down to the Ritz in Picca- 
dilly. There he had bathed and changed into 
evening clothes, and now, as the clock was striking 
eight, he sat down in his box. 

The curtains were partially drawn and he could 
not be seen from the auditorium, though he knew 
that when the theatre filled all Society would know 
where he was, even though he was not actually 
visible. 

At present the beautiful little theatre was but 
half lit. There was no pit, and the vista of red- 
leather armchairs which made the stalls was 
almost bare of people. There was a sprinkling 
of folk in the dress-circle, but the upper circle, 

269 


270 


The Socialist 


which took the place of gallery and stretched up 
to the roof, was packed with people. It was the 
only part of the aristocratic Park Lane Theatre 
that was unreserved. 

The fire-proof curtain was down, hiding the 
act-drop, the orchestra was a wilderness of empty 
chairs, and none of the electric footlights were 
turned on. Now and again some muffled noises 
came from the stage, where, probably, the car- 
penters were putting the finishing touches to the 
first scene, and a continuous hum of talk fell from 
the upper circle, sounding like bees swarming in 
a garden to one who sits in his library with an 
open window upon a summer day. 

The duke sat alone. He was in a curious mood. 
The perplexity and irritation with life and circum- 
stance which had been so poignant during the 
afternoon at Oxford had quite left him. He was 
quite placid now. His nerves were stilled, he 
remained quietly expectant. 

Yet he was sad also, and he had many reasons 
for sadness. The old life was over, the old ideas 
had gone, the future, which had seemed so irrev- 
ocably ordered, so settled and secure for him, 
was now a mist, an unknown coimtry full of 
perils and alarms. 

The duke was a young man who was always 
completely honest with himself. As he sat alone 
in the box waiting for what was to ensue he knew 
three things. He knew that something of tre- 
mendous importance was going to happen to him 


The Duke Knows at Last 


271 


on that night. He knew that he could no longer 
regard his enormous wealth and high rank from 
the individualistic point of view. And he knew 
that he had made a horrible, ghastly, and irre- 
mediable mistake in asking Lady Constance 
Camborne to be his wife. 

It was the most hideous of all possible mis- 
takes. 

It was a mistake for which there was no remedy. 
Carried away by a sudden gust of passion, he had 
done what was irrevocable. He had found 
almost at once that he did not love her, that he 
had been possessed by the power of her beauty 
and charm for a moment; but never, under any 
circumstances could he feel a real and abiding 
love for her. 

A knock came at the door of the box, and a 
second afterwards James Fabian Rose entered. 
The gleaming expanse of shirt-front only accen- 
tuated the extreme pallor of his face, and beneath 
the thatch of mustard-coloured hair his eyes 
shone like lamps. 

Rose was nervous and somewhat unlike his 
usual self. He was always nervous on the first 
nights of his plays, and lost his cool assurance 
and readiness of manner. To-night he was 
particularly so. 

“ I thought I would just come in and say ‘ how- 
do-you-do, ’ ” he said, shaking the duke heartily 
by the hand. “They told me that you were in 
the house.” 


272 


The Socialist 


The duke was genuinely glad to see his cele- 
brated friend, and his face reflected the pleasure 
that he felt. The visit broke in upon sad thoughts 
and the ever-growing sensation of loneliness. ‘ ‘ Oh ! 
do sit down for a minute or two, ” he said. “ It ’s 
most kind of you to look me up. I suppose 
you ’re frightfully busy, though?”. 

“On the contrary,” Rose replied, “I have 
nothing on earth to do. Ever3^hing is finished 
and out of my hands now. If you had said that 
you supposed I was frightfully nervous, you 
would have been far more correct.” 

The duke nodded sympathetically. “ I know, ” 
he said. “I’m sure it must be awful.” 

“It is; and, of course, it ’s worse to-night than 
ever before. I am flying right in the face of 
Society and all convention. I ’m putting on a 
play which will rouse the fierce antagonism of 
all the society people, who will be here in a few 
minutes. I ’m going tooth-and-nail for your 
order. And, finally, I am introducing an un- 
known actress to the London stage. It ’s enough 
to make any one nervous. I ’m trying to preach 
a sermon and produce a work of art at one and the 
same moment, and I ’m afraid the result will be 
absolute failure.” 

The duke, for his part, had never expected 
anything else but failure for the venture until this 
very evening. But to-night, for some reason or 
other, he had a curious certainty that the play, 
would not fail. It was an intuition without 


The Duke Knows at Last 273 


reason, but he would have staked anything upon 
the event. 

His strange certainty and confidence was in 
his voice as he answered the Socialist. 

“No,” he said, “it is going to be a gigantic 
success. I am quite definitely sure of it. It is 
going to be the success of your life. And more 
than that, it is not only going to be an artistic 
triumph, but it will be the strongest blow you 
have ever struck for Socialism!” 

Rose looked at the yoimg man with keen 
scrutiny. Then a little colour came into the 
linen-white cheeks, and he held out his hand with 
a sudden and impulsive gesture. 

“You put new confidence into me,” he said, 
“and the generosity of your words makes me 
ashamed. Here I am attacking all that you hold 
dear, attacking you, indeed, in a public way! 
And you can say that. I know, moreover, from 
your tone, that it is n’t mere Olympian indifference 
to anything I and my socialistic brethren can do 
against any one so fortified and entrenched, so 
highly placed as you are. It is fine of you to say 
what you have said. It is fine of you to be 
present here to-night. And it is finer still of you 
to remain friends with me and to shake me by 
the hand.” 

The duke smiled rather sadly and shook his 
head. 

“ No, ” he said ; “there is nothing fine in it at all. 
Rose. You say that I am fortified and en- 


The Socialist 


274 

trenched. So I was, fortified with ignorance and 
indifference, entrenched by selfishness and con- 
vention. But the castle has been undermined 
though it has not fallen yet. Already I can hear 
the muffled sound of the engineers in the cellars! 
I am not what I used to be. I do not think as I 
used to think. You are responsible, in the first 
instance, for far more than you know or suspect.** 
Rose had listened with strange attention. The 
colour had gone again from his face, his eyes 
blazed with excitement. The lips beneath the 
mustard-coloured moustache were slightly parted. 
When he replied it was in a voice which he vainly 
tried to steady. 

“This is absolutely new to me,** he said. “It 
moves me very deeply. It is startling but it is 
splendid I What you have said fills me with hope. 
Do you care to tell me more — not now, because 
I see the theatre is filling up — but afterwards? 
We are having a supper on the stage when the 
show is over — success or not — and we might have 
a talk later. I did n’t like to ask you before. “ 

“I shall be delighted to come,’’ the duke 
answered. “I have spoken of these things to a 
few people only. Arthur Burnside has been my 
chief confidant.** 

“Splendid fellow, Burnside!** Rose said, with 
enthusiasm. “A brilliant intellect! He will be 
a power in England some day.** 

“He is already,” said the duke, with a smile. 
He has inherited three hundred thousand 


The Duke Knows at Last 


275 


pounds from a distant relative, who made a for- 
tune in Canada, and has died intestate. He tells 
me he is going to devote the whole of it to the 
socialistic cause.’* 

Rose gasped. “Three hundred thousand 
pounds!’’ he said. “Why it will convert half 
England I You spring surprise after surprise upon 
me. My brain is beginning to reel. Upon my 
word, I do believe that this night will prove to be 
the crowning night of my career!” 

“I’m sure I hope so,” the duke answered 
warmly. “But isn’t it fine of Burnside! To 
give up everything like that.” 

“It is fine,” Rose answered; “but there are 
many Socialists who would do it — ^just as there 
are, of course, plenty of Socialists who would 
become individualists within five minutes of in- 
heriting a quarter of a million! But Burnside 
will not give it all up; I shall see to that.” 

“But I thought ” 

“ Many people fail to understand that we don’t 
want, at any rate, in the present state of things 
and probably not for hundreds of years, to abolish 
private property. We want to regulate it. We 
w’ant to abolish poverty entirely, but we don’t 
say yet that a man shall not have a fair income, 
and one in excess of others. I shall advise Burn- 
side, for he will come to me, to retain a sufficient 
capital to bring him in an income of a thousand 
pounds a year. If the possession of capital was 
limited to, say, thirty thousand pounds in each 


276 


The Socialist 


individual case, the economic problem would be 
solved. But I must go. The world arrives, the 
individualists and aristocrats muster in force!’' 

“ What are you going to do? Why not sit here 
with me?” 

Rose smiled. “ I never watch one of my 
plays on the first night,” he said. “It would be 
torture to the nerves. I am going to forget all 
about the play and go to a concert at the Queen’s 
Hall. I shall come back before the curtain is 
rung down — in case the audience w^ant to throw 
things at me! Au revoir, until supper — you ’ve 
given me a great deal to think about. ” 

With a wave of his hand. Rose hurried away, 
and the duke was once more alone. 

The theatre was filling up rapidly as the duke 
moved a little to the front of the box and peeped 
round the curtains. 

Party after party of well-dressed people were 
pouring into the stalls . Diamonds shimmered upon 
necks and arms which were like columns of ivory, 
there was a sudden infusion of colour, pinks and 
blues, greens and greys, wonderfully accentuated 
and set off by the sombre black and white of the 
men’s clothes. 

A subtle perfume began to fill the air, the 
blending of many essences ravished from 
the flowers of the C6te d’Azur. The lights in the 
roof suddenly jumped up, and the electric cande- 
labra round the circle became brilliant. There 
was a hum of talk, a cadence of cultured and 


The Duke Knows at Last 


277 


modulated voices. The whole theatre had become 
alive, vivid, full of colour and movement. 

And, in some electric fashion, the duke was 
aware that every one was expecting — even as he 
was expecting — ^the coming of great things. 
There was a subtle sense of stifled excitement — 
apprehension was it? — ^that was perfectly patent 
and real. 

Everybody felt that something was going to 
happen. It was not an ordinary first night. 
Even the critics, who sat more or less together, 
were talking eagerly among themselves and had 
lost their somewhat exaggerated air of non- 
chalance and boredom. 

The duke saw many people that he knew. 
Every one who was not upon the Riviera was 
there. Great ladies nodded and whispered, cele- 
brated men whispered and nodded. A curious 
blend of amusement and anxiety was the keynote 
of the expression upon many faces. 

To-night, indeed, was a night of nights! 

The duke had not written to Lady Constance 
Camborne to say that he was going to be present 
at the first night of The Socialist. She had made 
some joking reference to the coming production 
in one of her letters but he had not replied to it. 
He had kept all his new mental development from 
her — locked up in his heart. From the very first 
he had never known real intimacy with her. 

As Society took its seats he was certain that 
every one was talking about him. Sooner or later 


278 


The Socialist 


some one or other would see him, and there would 
be a sensation. He was sure of it. It would 
create a sensation. 

For many reasons the duke was glad that 
neither Lord Hayle, the bishop, nor Constance 
were in the theatre. Gerald, of course, was in 
hospital at Oxford, the earl and Constance were 
down at Carlton. 

Even as the thought came to his mind, and he 
watched the stalls cautiously from the back of 
the darkened box, he started and became rigid. 
Something seemed to rattle in his head, there 
was a sensation as if cold water had been poured 
down his spine. 

The Earl of Camborne and his daughter had 
entered the opposite box upon the grand circle 
tier. 

The duke shrank back into the box, asking 
himself with fierce insistence why he felt thus — 
guilty, found out, ashamed? 

At that moment the overture ended and the 
curtain rose upon the play. 

Then the duke knew. 


CHAPTER XXI 


IN THE STAGE BOX AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE 

T he curtain rose upon a drawing-room scene, 
perfectly conceived and carried out, an 
illusion of solid reality, immense and satisfying 
to eye and intelligence alike. 

Here was a silver table, covered with those 
charming toys, modern and antique, which 
fashionable women collect and display. 

There was a revolving book-shelf of ebony and 
lapis lazuli which held — so those members of the 
audience who were near could see — ^the actual 
novels and volumes of belles lettres of the moment ; 
the things they had in their own drawing-rooms. 

The whole scheme was wonderfully done. It 
was a room such as Waring and Liberty, assisted 
by the individual taste of its owner, carry out. 

Up to a certain height the walls — and how real 
and solid they appeared ! — were of pale grey, then 
came a black picture rail, and above it a frieze 
of deep orange colour. Black, orange, and grey, 
these were the colour notes of all the scene , and 
upon the expanses of grey were rows of old Japan- 
ese prints, or, rather, the skilful imitation of them, 
framed in gold. 

The carpet was of orange, carrying a serpentine 
279 


28 o 


The Socialist 


design of dead black, two heavy curtains of black 
velvet hung on either side of a door leading into 
a conservatory, softly lit by electric lights con- 
cealed amid the massed blossoms, for it was a 
night scene that opened the play. 

There was a low murmur of applause and 
pleasure from the crowded theatre, for here was a 
picture as complete and beautiful as any hardened 
playgoers had seen for many years. Then the 
sound died away. The new actress was upon the 
stage, the imknown Mary Marriott; there was a 
great hush of curiosity and interest. 

As the curtain rose the girl had been sitting 
upon a Chesterfield sofa of blue linen at the 
“O. P.” side of the stage. For a moment or 
two she had remained quite motionless, a part 
of the picture, and, with a handkerchief held to 
her face, her shoulders shaking convulsively. 

She was dressed in an evening gown of flame- 
colour and black. 

In front of her, and in the centre of the 
stage, two odd and incongruous figures were 
standing. 

One was a shabby, middle-aged woman, pale, 
shrinking, and a little furtive among all the 
splendours in which she found herself. She wore 
a rusty bonnet and a black cape scantily trimmed 
with jet. 

By the woman’s side stood a tall girl in a hat 
and a cheap, fawn-coloured jacket. The girl 
held a soiled boa of white imitation fur in one 


At the Park Lane Theatre 281 


restless hand. She was beautiful, but sullen and 
hard of face. 

Not a word was spoken. 

It might have been a minute and a half before 
a word was said. The only sound was that of the 
sobbing from the richly-dressed woman upon 
the couch and the timid, shuffling feet of the two 
humble people — mother and daughter evidently 
— who stood before her. 

Yet, curiously enough — and, indeed, it was 
unprecedented — ^not a sigh nor sound of impatience 
escaped the audience. One and all were as still 
as death. Some extraordinary influence was 
already flowing over the footlights to capture their 
imaginations and their nerves. 

As yet they had n’t seen the face of the new 
actress, of whom they had heard so much in 
general talk and read so much in the newspapers. 

A minute and a half had gone by and not a 
word had been spoken. 

They all sat silent and motionless. 

Suddenly Mary jumped up from the sofa and 
threw her handkerchief away. 

They saw her for the first time ; her marvellous 
beauty sent a flutter through the boxes and the 
stalls, her voice struck upon their ears almost 
like a blow. 

Never was a play started thus before. Mary — 
upon the programme she was Lady Augusta Decies, 
a young widow — leapt up and faced the two 
motionless figures before her. Tears were splash- 


282 


The Socialist 


ing down her cheeks, her lovely mouth quivered 
with pain, her arms were outstretched, and her 
perfect hands were spread in sympathy and 
entreaty. 

“Oh, but it shan’t be, Mrs. Dobson! It can’t 
be! I will stop it! I will alter it for you and 
Helen and all of you!” 

These were the first words of the play. They 
poured out with a music that was terribly com- 
pelling. 

There was a cry of agony, a hymn of sympathy, 
and a stern resolve. An audible sigh and shudder 
went round the theatre as that perfect voice 
swept round it. 

“What was this play to be? Who was this 
girl? What did it all mean?” 

Some such thought was in the mind of every 
one. 

Such a voice had not been heard in a London 
theatre for long. Sarah Bernhardt had a voice 
like that, Duse had a voice like that — a voice 
like liquid silver, a voice like a fairy waterfall 
falling into a lake of dreamland. Most of the 
people there had heard the loveliest speaking 
voices of the modern world. But this was as 
lovely and compelling as any of them, and 
yet it had something more. It had one supreme 
quality — ^the quality of absolute conviction. 

The new player — ^this unknown Mary Marriott 
— was hardly acting. It was a real cry of anguish 
straight from the heart itself. 


At the Park Lane Theatre 283 


Every one there felt it, though in different 
ways and according to the measure of their 
understanding. 

To one man it came as a double revelation; it 
came with the force and power of a mighty 
avalanche that rushes down the sides of a high 
Alp, sweeping forests and villages away in its 
tremendous course. 

The duke knew that here was one of the very 
greatest artists who had ever come upon the 
boards, and he knew also — oh, sweet misery and 
sudden shame! — ^that this was the woman he had 
loved from their first meeting — had loved, loved 
now, hopelessly, for ever and a day! 

In that moment he lowered his head and 
prayed. 

He sent up an inarticulate prayer to God, a 
wild, despairing ejaculation, that he might be 
given power to bear the burden, that he might 
be a man, a gentleman, and keep these things hid. 

From where he sat in the shadow of the box he 
could see Lady Constance Camborne opposite. 
Both she and the bishop were leaning forward 
with polite attention stamped upon their faces. 
There was the girl who was to be his wife. He 
was bound to her for always, but she did n’t know 
— she never should know! Above all, he must 
be a gentleman! 

Never did play have such an extraordinary 
beginning, one only possible to an artist of con- 
summate ability and knowledge, to a playwright 


284 The Socialist 

of absolute unconventionality and daring in 
art. 

In ten minutes the whole attention of the house 
was engrossed, after the first quarter of an hour 
the audience was . perfectly still. 

But this was curious. Throughout the whole 
of the first act there was hardly any applause — 
until the fall of the curtain. What little clapping 
of hands there was came from the huge upper 
circle, which combined in itself the fimctions of 
pit, upper circle, and gallery in the Park Lane 
Theatre. 

But it was not a chilling silence; it was by no 
means the silence of indifference, of boredom. 
It was a silence of astonishment at the daring of 
the play. It was also a silence of wonder at, and 
appreciation of, the supreme talent of the writer, 
and the players who interpreted him. 

There were many Socialists in the house, more 
especially in the upper tiers, but these were in a 
large minority. 

Rose and Flood had allowed but few tickets to 
be sold to the libraries and theatre agents for the 
first three nights. 

They had laid their plans well; they wanted 
Society to see the play before other classes of the 
community did so. 

The “ boom” which had been worked up in the 
general Press of London, more especially owing 
to the skilful direction of it by that astute editor, 
Mr. Goodrich, of the Daily Wire^ had been quite 


At the Park Lane Theatre 285 


sufficient to ensure an enormous demand for seats. 

The manager of the box office had his instruc- 
tions, and as a result the theatre was crammed 
with people to whom socialistic doctrines were 
anathema, and who sat angry at the doctrine 
which was being pumped into their brains from 
the other side of the footlights, but spellbound 
by the genius that was doing it. 

Yet the plot of the play was quite simple. It 
seemed fresh and new because of the subtlety of 
its treatment, yet, nevertheless, it was but a peg 
on which to hang an object lesson. 

Mary, the heroine, represented a woman of the 
wealthy class which controls the “high finance,” 
Her late husband had left her millions. As a girl 
she was brought up in the usual life of her class, 
shielded from all true knowledge of human want, 
the younger daughter of an earl, married at 
twenty to a gentlemanly high priest of the god 
Mammon, who had died five years after the 
marriage, leaving her with one child, a boy, and 
mistress of his vast fortune. At the period when 
the play opened she was engaged to the young 
Marquis of Wigan, a peer, also immensely wealthy. 
She was deeply in love with him — real love had 
come to her for the first time in her life — and he 
adored her. They were soon to be married. 
They lived in a rosy dream. They knew nothing 
of the outside world. 

It was at her first real contact with the outside 
world, at terrible, stinging, and bitter truths. 


286 


The Socialist 


which were told her by an ex-kitchenmaid whom 
she had employed in the past but never seen, 
which struck the keynote of the play. 

It was a play of black and white, of yellow and 
violet — of incredible contrasts. 

No such brutal and poignant thing had been 
seen upon the stage of a West End theatre before. 
In all its shifting scenes and changes there was a 
hideous alternation. 

The perfection of cultured luxury, of environ- 
ment and thought, was shown with the most 
lavish detail and fidelity. No scenes in the lives 
of wealthy and celebrated people had ever been 
presented with such entire disregard of cost 
before. 

The pictures were perfect. They were recog- 
nized by every one there — ^they lived in just such 
a way themselves. 

But the other scenes? — ^the hideously sombre 
pictures — ^these struck into the heart with chilling 
horror and dismay. 

Every one knew in a vague sort of way that 
such things went on. They had always known 
it, but they had put the facts away from them- 
selves and refused to recognize them. 

They were trapped now. 

They had to sit and watch a supremely skilful 
imitation of real life in the malign slums of London. 
They had to sit and listen to dialogue which burnt 
and blistered, which seared even the most callous 
heart, truths from the hell of London forced into 


At the Park Lane Theatre 287 


their ears, phrases which lashed their soft com- 
placency like burning whips. 

The act-drop came down in absolute silence 
after the last scene of the first act, a scene in an 
East-End sweater’s den, so cruel and relentless 
in its realism that dainty women held handker- 
chiefs of filmy lace to their nostrils as if the very 
foul odour and miasma of the place might reach 
them. 

There was a long sigh of relief as the horror was 
shut out. The dead, funereal silence was con- 
tinued for a moment, and then everybody sud- 
denly realized something. 

The whole audience realized that they had been 
witnessing an artistic triumph that would always 
be historic in the annals of the stage. 

Mary Marriott had done this thing. The fire 
of her incarnate pity and sorrow had played upon 
their heart-strings till all of them — wishful, 
greedy, worldly, sensual — ^were caught up into 
an extraordinary emotion of gratitude and sym- 
pathy. 

A burst of cheering, a thunder of applause 
absolutely without precedent, rang and echoed 
in the theatre. The evening pedestrians upon 
the pavements of Oxford Street heard it and 
halted in wonder before the facade of the 
theatre. 

High up in the “grid” the distant stage car- 
penters heard it and looked at each other in 
amazjement. Up stone flights of stairs in far-away 


288 


The Socialist 


dressing-rooms members of the company heard 
it and gasped. 

Mary Marriott and Aubrey Flood came before 
the curtain and bowed. 

The full-handed thunder rose to a terrifying 
volume of sotmd, and the Duke of Paddington, 
forgetful of all else, leaned forward in his box and 
shouted with the rest. 

The tears were falling down his cheeks, his voice 
was choked and hoarse. As she retired Mary 
Marriott looked at him and smiled a welcome! 

There were only three acts. 

In the course of the plot, simply but ingeniously 
construed, the Marquis of Wigan and Lady 
Augusta Decies were taken into the most awful 
and hopeless places of London. There was a 
third principal character, a cynical cicerone with 
a ruthless and bitter tongue, who explained 
everything to them and was the chorus of their 
progression. 

In Doctor Davidson, a prominent socialistic 
leader, every one recognized a caricature of James 
Fabian Rose by himself, put before them to ram 
the message home! 

The struggle in the woman's mind and heart 
was manifested with supreme art. Piece by 
piece the audience saw the old barriers of caste 
and prejudice crumbling away, until the cul- 
minating moment arrived when the young mar- 
quis must choose between the loss of her and the 


At the Park Lane Theatre 289 


abandonment of all his life theories and the 
prejudices of race. 

The end came swiftly and inevitably. 

There was a great culminating scene, in which 
the girl appealed to her lover to give up almost 
everything — as she herself was about to do — for 
the cause of the people, for the cause of brother- 
hood and humanity. He hesitates and wavers. 
He is kindly and good-hearted, he wants her more 
than anything else, but in him caste and long 
training triumphs. 

There is a final moment in which he confesses 
that he cannot do this thing. 

With pain and anguish he renounces his love 
for her in favour of his order, the order to which 
she also belongs. 

Even for her he cannot do it. He must remain 
as he has always been; he must say good-bye. 

The last scene is the same as the first — it is Lady 
Augusta’s drawing-room. Everything is over; 
they say farewell at the parting of the ways. 

But she holds the little son by her first husband 
up to him. 

“Good-bye, dear Charles!” she says. “You 
and I go different ways for ever and a day. God 
bless you! But this little fellow, with the blood 
of our own class in his veins, shall do what you 
cannot do. Good-bye!” 

As the last curtain fell a tall and portly figure 
came into the Duke of Paddington’s box. 

“John,” said the Earl of Camborne and Bishop 


290 


The Socialist 


of Carlton, have known that you were here 
for the last hour. Constance has gone back to 
Grosvenor Street, but I want to speak to you very 
seriously indeed.” 

The duke looked up quickly, his voice was 
decisive. 

“ I did n’t know that either you or Connie were 
in London, ” he said. “ I understood from Gerald 
that you were both down at the palace. I 'm 
very sorry, but I ’m afraid we shall have to 
postpone our talk until to-morrow morning. I ’ll 
turn up at Grosvenor Street at whatever time 
you wish. To-night, however, now, as a matter 
of fact, I am very particularly engaged indeed. ” 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE SUPPER ON THE STAGE 

T he success of the play was beyond all question. 

It was stupendous, overwhelming and com- 
plete. 

For ten minutes the house shouted itself hoarse 
and Mary Marriott was recalled over and over 
again. Great baskets of flowers had made their 
appearance as she stood bowing for the tenth 
time, and were handed up to her till she stood 
surrounded by a mass of blossom. 

Hundreds of opera glasses were levelled at her, 
eager, critical and admiring faces watched this 
lovely and graceful girl who stood before them, 
quietly and modestly, and with a great joy 
shining in her eyes. 

For she had stirred them, stirred them by the 
depths of her art and the passion of her playing. 
They knew that in one night a great artist had 
suddenly appeared. However much they might 
disagree and dislike the dpctrines preached in 
The Socialist they knew that the play was a work 
of genius, and had been interpreted with supreme 
talent. Aubrey Flood they were fond of. He 
was a popular favourite, he had acquitted himself 

291 


292 


The Socialist 


well upon this eventful night. He had received 
his meed of praise. 

But for Mary Marriott there was a reception so 
whole-hearted and magnificent that the tears 
might well come into the young girl’s eyes and 
the slim, flower-laden hands tremble with emotion 
as she bowed her gratitude. 

James Fabian Rose had to make a little speech. 

He did it with extraordinary assurance and 
aplomb, and he was received with shouts of ap- 
plause and good-natured laughter. He had 
amused and pleased society, and that was enough. 
The few mocking and brilliant epigrams he flung 
at them were taken in good part. The deep 
undercurrent of seriousness seemed but to har- 
monise with the electric, emotional influences of 
the moment. 

For a minute or two — until they should be 
seated at supper in the smart restaurants, clubs, 
and houses — they were all Socialists! 

And the fact that their convictions of the truth 
would vanish with the first plover’s egg and glass 
at Pol Roger, by no means affected their butterfly 
enthusiasm as the famous author talked to and 
at them. 

The Duke of Paddington watched it all with a 
strange sense of exhilaration and joy. Lord 
Camborne had given him an appointment in 
Grosvenor Street for the morrow, and had hur- 
ried away in the most marked perplexity and 
annoyance. 


The Supper on the Stage 293 

Lord Hayle had been writing to his father, the 
duke saw that at once, but he was not perturbed. 
He had made his resolve. He was master of his 
own fate, captain of his own soul — what did 
anything else matter? What was to be done 
was to be done, come what might. One must be 
true to oneself!’* 

As the weary, excited audience began at last 
to press out of the stalls and boxes, there was a 
tap upon the door of the duke’s, and Mr. Goodrick, 
the editor of the Daily Wire^ entered. The little 
man’s face was flushed with excitement, and he 
was smiling with pleasure. 

Yet even under these conditions of animation 
he still seemed a quiet, insignificant little person, 
and did not in any way suggest the keen, sword- 
like intellect, the controller of a vast mass of 
public opinion that he was. 

“Rose has sent me to say that supper will be 
ready in ten minutes,” he began, “and Mary 
Marriott especially charged me to tell you how 
grateful she is that you have come here to-night. 
What a success! There has never been anything 
like it! All London will go mad about the thing 
to-morrow! I had three members of the staff 
here to-night — Masterman, who does the dramatic 
criticism, purely from the standpoint of dramatic 
art, don’t you know; William Conrad, the parson’s 
younger brother, who is one of our political people ; 
and old Miss Saurin, who does the society and 
dress. They ’re all three gone down to the office 


The Socialist 


294 

in cabs in a state of lambent enthusiasm and 
excitement. We shall have a fine paper to- 
morrow morning!” 

“I’m sure you will, Mr. Goodrick,” the duke 
answered. “Perhaps finer than you know.” 

The little man laughed as he lit a cigarette and 
offered the case to his companion. “Yes,” he 
said, “ but this time it won’t be a ‘ scoop ’ as it was 
when I first had the pleasure of meeting you. 
Good heavens! what a boom that was for the 
Wire. I shall never forget it as long as I live! 
We were absolutely the only paper in the kingdom 
to publish the full details of your disappearance 
and recovery. You don’t know how much we 
owe you, your Grace, from the journalistic point 
of view. Such things don’t come twice, more ’s 
the pity!” 

“I’m not so sure of that, Mr. Goodrick,” the 
duke replied slowly. “Perhaps to-night, within 
an hour or so, I am going to provide you with a 
‘scoop’ as you call it, to which the first was a 
mere nothing!” 

The editor stiffened as a setter stiffens in the 
stubble when the birds are near. “Your voice 
has no joking in it,” he said. “There is mean- 
ing in your Grace’s words — ^what is it?” 

As he spoke a waiter came into the box. ‘ ‘ Sup- 
per is prepared upon the stage, your Grace,” he 
said. “Miss Marriott, Mr. Rose, and Mr. Aubrey 
Flood request the honour of your Grace’s presence.” 

“Come along, Mr. Goodrick,” the duke said, 


The Supper on the Stage 295 

laughing a little. “You see you will have to wait 
an event like any one else in this world! But I 
promise you the ‘scoop’ all the samel” 

They went out of the box, the waiter leading 
the way to the sliding iron “pass door,” which 
led directly on to the stage. For the first few 
steps they were in semi-darkness, for a boxed-in 
screen had been hurriedly set by the carpenters 
to make a supper-room. Then, pushing open 
a canvas door, they came out into the improvised 
supper-room. 

Some forty people were standing upon the 
stage in groups, talking animatedly to each other. 
In the background were flower-covered tables 
gleaming with glass and silver and covered with 
flowers, among which many tiny electric lights 
were hidden. 

Mary Marriott stood in the centre of a laughing 
happy group of men and women. She wore a 
long tea-gown of dark red, made of some Indian 
fabric, and edged with a narrow band of green 
embroidery upon a biscuit-coloured ground. She 
wore dark-red roses in the coiled masses of her 
marvellous black hair, the paint of the theatre 
had been washed from her face, and her eyes were 
brighter, her cheeks more lovely, than any art 
could make them. She was a queen come into her 
own on that night! An empress of her art, 
throned, acknowledged, and wonderful. 

To her came the duke. 

It was a strange and almost symbolic meeting 


296 


The Socialist 


to some of the quick- wits and artists’ brains 
there. Here was a real prince of this world, a 
prince who had suffered the hours of a keen and 
bitter attack with fine dignity and chivalry — 
James Fabian Rose had not spared words — and 
there was a princess of art, who from nothing had 
made a more enduring kingdom, a more splendid 
realm, than even the long line of peers, statesmen, 
and warriors had bestowed upon the young man 
before her. 

Yet they were both royal, they looked royal, 
there was an emanation of royalty as the duke 
bowed over the hand of the actress and touched 
it with his lips. 

'' Hommage au vrai Art,'' he murmured, quot- 
ing the words which a king had once used as he 
kissed the hand of the greatest French actress of 
his time. 

“It was so good of you to come,” she said, 
and he thought that her voice soimded like a 
flute. “It is kinder still of you to be here now. 
But they are sitting down to supper. I believe 
we are placed together; shall we go?” 

She took his arm, and his whole being thrilled 
as the little white hand touched his sleeve and 
her gracious presence was so near. 

They sat down together in the centre of 
one of the long tables. The duke sat on one 
side of Mary, James Fabian Rose upon the 
other. 

The waiters began to serve the clear amber 


The Supper on the Stage 297 

consomm6 in little porcelain bowls ; the champagne, 
cream and amber, flowed into the glasses. 

Every one was in the highest spirits — ^actors, 
authors, journalists, socialistic leaders — every one. 

It was an odd gathering enough to the casual 
eye. The ladies of the stage were radiant in their 
evening gowns and flowers, some of the ladies 
in the ranks — or rather upon the staff — of the 
Socialist army were in evening frocks also, others, 
hard-featured, earnest-eyed women, with short 
hair and serviceable coats and skirts, were scat- 
tered among them, grubs among the butterflies, 
scorning gay attire. 

The men were the same, though the majority 
of them were in conventional evening clothes. 
Yet, sitting by Mrs. Rose, charming in pale blue, 
and with sapphires upon her neck, sat a man in a 
brown suit with a turn-down collar of blue linen, 
a grey flannel shirt, and a red tie. It was Mr. 
William Butterworth, the great Socialist M.P. for 
one of the Lancashire manufacturing towns, who 
had never worn a dress suit in his life, and never 
meant to, on principle. Such contrasts were 
everywhere apparent, but to-night they were mere 
superficial accidents. 

Every one was rejoicing at the immense success 
of The Socialist y every one realised that to-night 
a new and hitherto undreamed of weapon had 
been forged. 

An artery was beating in the duke’s head — or 
was it his heart? — beating with the soimd of dis- 


298 


The Socialist 


tant drums. He was speaking to Mary in a low 
voice, and she was bending a little towards him. 
“ Oh, it was far more wonderful and moving than 
you yourself can ever know!” he said. “I have 
seen all the great players of our day. But you 
are queen of them all I There has never been any 
one like you. There never will be any one like 
you.” 

He stopped, unable to say more. The drum- 
ming within gathered power and sound, became 
imminent, near, a mighty crescendo, a tide! a 
flood! 

“It is sweet of you to say such things,” she 
answered in her low, flute-like voice, ‘ ‘ but of 
course they are not true. I am only a very 
humble artist indeed. And no one could have 
helped playing fairly well in such a play as this, 
especially when the cause it advocates has become 
very dear to me. I am a Socialist heart and soul 
now, you know.” She sighed, hesitated for a 
moment, and then went on: “I hope you were 
not hurt to-night by anything upon the stage. 
I could not help thinking of you. I knew you 
were in the box, and it was, by the very nature 
of it, aimed so directly at you, or rather the class 
to which you belong and lead. Since I have been 
converted to Socialism I have tried to put myself 
into the place of other people — ^to imagine how 
they see things. And I know how subversive 
and outrageous all our ideas must seem to you.” 

“Then you were really sorry for me?” 


The Supper on the Stage 299 

“Really and truly sorry.” Perhaps the lovely 
girl’s voice betrayed her a little, its note was so 
strangely intimate and tender. 

He started violently, and a joyful, wonderful, 
and yet despairing thought flashed into his mind. 
He was silent for some seconds before he replied. 

“No, I wasn’t hurt a bit,” he said at length. 
“Not in the very least. I have something to tell 
you, Mary” — he was quite unconscious that he 
had called her by her Christian name. She saw 
it instantly, and now it was her turn to feel the 
sudden, overwhelming stab of joy and wonder — 
and despair! 

“Tell me,” she said softly. 

“I was not hurt,” he answered, “because all 
my ideas are changed also. I, too, have seen the 
light. The mists of selfishness and individualism 
have vanished from around me. The process 
has been gradual. It has been terribly hard. 
But it has been iaevitable and sure, and it dates 
from the day on which I first saw you by my 
bedside in the house of James Fabian Rose. To- 
night you and he together have completed my 
conversion. With a full knowledge of all that 
this means to me, I still say to you that from 
to-night onwards I am a Socialist heart and soul! ” 

She looked at him, and the colour faded out of 
her flower-like face, and her great eyes grew wide 
with wonder. Then the colour came stealing 
back, pink, like the delicate inside of a shell, 
crimson with realisation and gladness. 


The Socialist 


300 


‘ ‘ Then ’ ’ she began . 

“You will hear to-night, ” he answered, and even 
as he did so Aubrey Flood, flushed with excite- 
ment, and his voice trembling with emotion, rose, 
and in a few broken, heart-felt words proposed 
the health of Mary Marriott and James Fabian 
Rose. 

The toast was drunk with indescribable en- 
thusiasm and verve. The high grid of the stage 
above echoed with the cheers. The very waiters, 
forgetting their duties, were caught up in the 
swing and excitement of it and shouted with the 
rest. 

It was some minutes before the pale man with 
the yellow beard could obtain a hearing. He 
stood there smiling and bowing and patting Mary 
upon the shoulder. 

Then he began. He acknowledged the honour 
they had done Mary and himself in a few brief 
words of deep feeling. Then, taking a wider 
course, he told them what he believed this would 
mean for Socialism, how that the theatre, a huge 
educational machine with far more power and 
appeal than a thousand books, a hundred lectures, 
was now their own. 

A new era was opening for them, and it dated 
from this night. Everything had been leading 
up to it for years, now the hour of fulfilment had 
come. 

He took a letter from his pocket. 

It was from Arthur Burnside, and had arrived 


301 


The Supper on the Stage 

from Oxford, during the course of the play. He 
had found it waiting for him when he returned 
to the theatre as the curtain fell on the last act. 

He told them the great news in short, sharp 
sentences of triumph, how that on this very night 
of huge success a great fortime was placed in their 
hands for the furtherance of the great work of 
humanity. 

When the second prolonged burst of applause 
and cheering was over Rose concluded his speech 
with a sympathetic reference to the duke’s pres- 
ence among them. 

As he concluded the duke leaned behind Mary’s 
chair and whispered a word to him. 

Immediately afterwards the leader rose and 
said that the Duke of Paddington asked permission 
to speak to them for a moment. 

There was a second’s silence of surprise, a burst 
of generous cheers, and the duke was speaking 
in grave, quiet tones the few sentences which were 
to agitate all England on the morrow and alter 
the whole course of his life for ever and a 
day. 

Mr. Goodrich had a notebook before him and a 
pencil poised in his right hand. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the duke, “what 
I have to say shall be said in the very fewest 
words possible. My friend Mr. Rose has said 
in his l^d remarks about my presence here that 
to-night I must have felt like a Daniel in a den 
of lions, or a lion in a den of Daniels — he was 


302 


The Socialist 


not sure which. I felt like neither one nor the 
other. Miss Marriott said to me just now that 
she hoped I was not hurt by the attack upon that 
class of the community which I may be thought 
to represent. Miss Marriott was wrong also. 
I have gone through experiences and learnt 
lessons which I need not trouble you with now. 
There stands my master in chief” — he pointed 
to Mr. Rose — and there have been many others. 
I came to the theatre to-night as nearly a Socialist 
in heart and mental conviction as any man could 
be without an actual declaration. At this mo- 
ment I announce and avow myself a true and 
convinced Socialist. I am with you all heart 
and soul! Allow me a personal reference. I am 
extremely wealthy. I have great estates in 
London and other parts of England. Some of 
these are entailed upon my heirs, and I only 
enjoy the emoluments during my own lifetime. 
The rest — and owing to past circumstances and 
my long minority the more considerable part — 
are mine to do with as I will. They are mine 
no longer. I give them freely to the Cause and 
to England. I join with my friend, Arthur 
Burnside, in renouncing a vast property in favour 
of the people. I shall retain only a sufficient 
sum to provide for me in reasonable comfort. 
All the details will be settled by the Central 
Committee of our party — ^it will take many 
months to arrange them, but that is by the way. 
And I offer myself and my work, for what they 


The Supper on the Stage 303 

are worth, to the Cause also. I have no more to 
say, ladies and gentlemen. ’’ 

He sat down in his chair, swayed a little, and 
as Mary bent over him and every one present 
rose to their feet, he swooned away. 

Mr. Goodrick stole out from his seat, rushed 
down the passage to the stage door, clasping his 
note-book, and leaped into a waiting cab. 

‘ ‘ A sovereign if you get me to the offices of the 
Daily Wire, in Fleet Street, in half an hour!” said 
Mr. Goodrick. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


POINTS OP VIEW FROM A DUKE, A BISHOP, A VIS- 
COUNT, AND THE DAUGHTER OP AN EARL 

T he rain was pouring down and it was a 
horribly gloomy, depressing morning. 

The rain fell through the drab, smoke-laden 
air of London like leaden spears, thrown upon 
the metropolis in anger by the gods who control 
the weather. 

The duke woke up and through the window 
opposite the foot of his bed saw the rain falling. 
He was in the same guest-room in the house of 
James Fabian Rose to which he had been carried 
when the exploring party had found him in the 
hands of the criminals of the West End slum. 
How long ago that seemed now, he thought, as 
he lay there in the grey, dreary light of the London 
morning. 

When he had fainted on the night before he had 
been carried into Aubrey Flood’s dressing-room, 
and speedily recovered consciousness. 

His swoon was nothing more than a natural 
protest of the nerves against an overwhelming 
strain. It could hardly have been otherwise. 
One does not undergo weeks of mental strain and 
dismay without overtaxing the strength. One 
304 


Points of View 


305 


does not go through a night in which conviction 
of truth comes to one, the knowledge of love, the 
certainty that, in honour, that love could never 
be declared, the solemn and public renunciation 
of almost everything is realised and declared, 
without collapse. 

He had found Mrs. Rose and Mary Marriott — 
ministering angels — by his side when he came 
back to the world. 

Rose had entered, and would not hear of the 
duke’s return to the Ritz. A messenger had been 
sent home for his things, and now he woke in 
the old familiar room upon this grey, depressing 
morning. 

He was feeling the inevitable reaction. He 
could not help but feel it. It was eight o’clock 
he saw from his watch, the same watch which had 
been taken from him by force on the night of the 
railway accident. 

The morning papers were out. One of these 
papers he knew would be even now having a 
record sale. The Daily Wire was having a huge 
boom. The general public were already learning 
of his renunciation. Before mid-day all society 
would know of it also. His hundreds of relations 
and connections would be reading the story. It 
would be known at Buckingham Palace and at 
Marlborough House. Lord Camborne would know 
of it, the news would reach Lord Hayle on his 
sick-bed at Oxford. Lady Constance would know 
it. 


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The Socialist 


Before lunch he had to go to Grosvenor Street 
He must keep his appointment with his futme 
father-in-law. 

And he was fearing this interview as he had 
never feared anything in this world before. What 
was going to happen he didn’t know. But he 
was certain that the meeting would be terrible. 
He felt frightfully alone, and there was only one 
little gleam of satisfaction in the outlook. Con- 
stance would stand by him. The beautiful girl 
who was to be his wife had often expressed her 
sympathy with the down-trodden and the poor. 
He could rely on her at least. 

He did not love her. He could never love her. 
He loved some one else with all his heart and soul, 
and believed — dared to believe — ^that she loved 
him also. 

That was a secret for her and for him for ever 
and ever. The thing might not be. He had to 
keep his word inviolable, his honour imstained. 
They both had duties to do — he and Mary ! They 
must live for the Cause, apart, lonely, but strong. 

He was pledged to Constance Camborne, and 
hand in hand, good comrades, they would work 
together for the common weal. 

The joy of life must be found in just that — in 
the “stem lawgiver” Duty. The other and 
divinest joy was not for him, and he must face 
the fact Hke a man of a great race. 

“So be it,” he muttered to himself with a 
bitter srmle. “Amen!” Then he rose and 


Points of View 


307 


plunged into the cold bath prepared for him in 
an alcove of the bedroom. 

He breakfasted alone with James Fabian Rose. 
Mary Marriott was staying in the house but both 
she and Mrs. Rose were utterly exhausted and 
would not be visible for many hours. 

The duke w^as quite frank with his host. He 
imburdened himself of the “perilous stufiE” of 
weeks to him; he laid everything bare, all the 
mental processes which had led to his absolute 
change of view. He spoke of the future and 
reiterated his determination to become a leader 
in the new Israel. He even told Rose of his fear 
and terror at the approaching interview with 
Lord Camborne, but of the most real and deep 
pain and distress he said never a word. 

He did not mention Mary Marriott, he said 
nothing of Lady Constance Camborne. Rose 
appeared to him then in a new Hght. 

The apostle of Socialism, the caustic wit, the 
celebrated man of literature was as gentle and 
tender as a child. He seemed to know everything, 
to enter into the psychology of the situation with 
an intuition and imderstanding which were as 
delicate and sure as those of a woman. He said 
no single word to indicate it, but the duke felt 
more and more certain as the meal went on that 
this wonderful man had penetrated, more deeply 
than he could have thought possible, to the depths 
of his soul. 

Rose knew that he loved Mary Marriott and 


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The Socialist 


must marry Constance Camborne. Twice during 
breakfast a swift gleam of sardonic but utterly 
kindly and sympathetic amusement flashed into 
the dark eyes of the pallid man. It was a gleam 
full of promise and understanding. But the duke 
never saw it, he did not see into the immediate 
future with the unerring certainty that the writer 
of plays and student of human life saw it. 

The duke had no hint of his own deliverance, 
but the elder man saw it clear and plain, and he 
would say nothing. A martyr must undergo his 
martyrdom before he wins his proper peace, it is 
the supreme condition of self-sacrifice, and James 
Fabian Rose knew that very well. 

The duke stood waiting in the bishop’s library 
at Grosvenor Street. 

‘‘His lordship will be with you in a moment, 
your Grace,” the butler said, quietly closing the 
door of that noble room. It might have been 
imagination, but the young man thought that he 
saw a curious expression flit over the man’s face, 
the half -compassionate, half-contemptuous look 
with which callous intelligence regards a madman. 

“Ah!” he thought to himself, “I suppose that 
sort of look is one to which I must become familiar 
in the future, it is part of the price that I must 
pay for living up to the truth that is in me. Very 
well, let it be so, I can keep a stiff upper lip, I 
believe. I must always remember the sort of 
people from whom I am descended. Many of 


Points of View 


309 


them were robbers and scoundrels, but at least 
they were strong men.” 

It was in this temper of mind that he waited 
in the splendid library, among all the hushed 
silence that a great collection of books seems to 
give a room, until the bishop should arrive. 

The duke had not long to wait. 

The distinguished and commanding old man 
entered, closed the door behind him, and walked 
straight up to him. 

The bishop’s face was very stem and the lines 
of old age seemed more deeply cut into it than 
usual. But there was a real pain in the steadfast 
and proud red eyes which added a pathos to his 
aspect and troubled the duke. 

“John,” Lord Camborne began, “when I saw 
you last night at that wicked and blasphemous 
play I trembled to think that most disquieting 
news which had reached me was true.” 

“And what was that, my lord?” 

“ Suffer me to proceed in my own way, please, 
and bear with me if I am prolix. I am in no 
happy mind. I went to that play as a public 
duty, and I took my daughter that she might see 
for herself the truth about the Socialists and the 
godless anarchy they preach. You had made 
no mention of your intention to be present, and 
I was glad to think that you would be quietly at 
Oxford. I had heard from Gerald — ^than whom 
you have no greater friend — ^that you were 
associating with disreputable and doubtful people. 


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forsaking men of your own class and living an 
extraordinary life.’' 

“It was a lie,” the duke answered shortly. 
“Gerald has been ill in bed, he has been misin- 
formed.” 

“ It was not only Gerald, ” the old man went on, 
“but letters reached me from other sources, 
letters full of the most disturbing details.” 

“Do you set spies upon my actions. Lord 
Camborne?” 

“That is unworthy of you, John,” the bishop 
answered gently, “unworthy both of you and of 
me. You are well aware that I could not stoop 
to such a thing. Do you forget that in your high 
position, with all its manifold responsibilities to 
God, to your country, and to yourself, your 
movements and dispositions are the object of 
the most wise and watchful scrutiny on the part 
of your tutors?” 

“I am sorry I spoke wrongly.” 

“I make allowances for you. The word was 
nothing, but it is a far harder task to make allow- 
ances for you in another way. You seem to have 
committed yourself irrevocably.” 

The old man’s voice had become very stern. 
The duke saw at once that he had read the Daily 
Wire, He said nothing. 

“You have been a traitor to your order,” the 
pitiless voice went on. “You have publicly 
blasphemed against the wise ordinances of God. 
A great peer of England, pledged to support the 


Points of View 


311 

Throne, you have cast in your lot with those who 
would destroy it. I say this in the full persuasion 
that the report of what occurred last night is 
correctly set forth in that pestilent news-sheet, 
the Daily Wire.'* 

‘‘It is perfectly true,’' said the duke. 

“You intend to abide by it?” 

“Unswervingly. My reason is convinced and 
my honour is pledged.” 

The bishop turned and strode twice up and 
down the library, a noble and reverend figure as 
he struggled with his anger. 

“I have seen Constance,” he said at length, 
speaking with marked difficulty. “ Of course any 
idea of your marriage is now out of the question. ” 

The suddenness of the words hit the duke like 
a blow. 

“And Constance?” he said in a faint voice; 
“she ” 

“ She is of one mind with me,” Lord Camborne 
answered. “The blow has been terrible for her, 
but she is true to her blood. An announcement 
that the marriage will not take place will be sent 
to the papers to-day.” 

“ May I see her?” 

“You may see her, John,” the bishop said 
brokenly. “Oh, why have you brought this 
shame and public disgrace upon us? I did not 
intend to make an appeal to you, but I knew 
your father, I have loved you, and there is my 
dear daughter. Is it too late? Cannot you 


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withdraw? Can it not be explained as a momen- 
tary aberration, a freak, a joke, call it what you 
will? There would be talk and scandal, of 
course, but it would soon blow over and be for- 
gotten. It could be arranged. I have great 
influence. Is it too late? Remember all that 
you are losing, think well before you answer. 

There vrere tears in the bishop’s voice. 

There were tears in the duke’s eyes as he 
answered. “Alas!” he said, “it is too late, I 
would not change even if I could, I must be true 
to myself.” 

“ God help you, preserve you, and forgive you,” 
Lord Camborne replied with lifted hand. “And 
now good-bye, in this world we shall not meet 
again. I will send Constance to you. Do not 
keep her long. Remember that you have an old 
man’s blessing.” 

With his hand over his eyes the bishop went 
from the room. More than once he stumbled in 
his walk. He was weeping. 

It was awful to see that high and stately old 
man stricken, to see that white and honourable 
head bowed in sorrow and farewell. 

Lady Constance came into the room. She was 
very pale, her eyes were swollen as if she also had 
been weeping. 

She went straight up to the duke, tall and 
erect as a dart, and held out her hand to 
him. 

“John,” she said. “I ’ve come to say good- 


Points of View 


313 


bye. Father has allowed me five minutes and no 
more. Father is terribly shaken.” 

He held her hand in his for a moment. She 
was very beautiful, very patrician, a true daughter 
of the race from which she had sprung. 

“Then -it is really all over, Constance?” he said 
with great sadness. 

“It must be all over for you and me,” she 
answered. 

“Tell me this, dear. Is what you say said of 
your own free will, or is it said because of your 
father’s authority and pressure? He has been 
very kind to me, kinder than from his natural 
point of view I can ever deserve. But I must 
know. I am ready and anxious. I am putting 
it horribly, but the situation is horrible. Con- 
stance, won’t you marry me still?” 

“You are not putting it horribly,” she said 
with a faint smile. “You are putting it chival- 
rously and like a gentleman. Let us be absolutely 
frank one with another. We come of ancient 
races, you and I. We have blood in us that 
common people have not. We are both of us 
quietly and intensely proud of that. ‘Noblesse 
oblige’ is our creed. Very well, I will not marry 
you for three reasons. First of them all is that 
you do not love me. No, don’t start, don’t 
protest. This is our last real meeting, and so in 
God’s name let ’s be done with shame. You 
admire me, you have a true affection for me. 
But that is all. We were both dazzled and 


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overcome by circumstances and the moment. 
You wanted me because I am beautiful, of your 
rank, because we should get on together. I was 
ready to marry you because I am very fond of 
you and because I know and feel that it is my 
destined lot in life to make a great marriage, to 
lead Society, always to be near the throne. The 
second reason that I won’t marry you is that by 
your own act you have deprived yourself of those 
material things that are my right and my destiny, 
and the third reason is that my father forbids it. 
John, I think I honour and like you more than I 
have ever done before for what you are doing. 
You have chosen your path, find peace and joy 
in it. I pray that you will ever do so, and I know 
that you are going to be very happy.” 

“Very happy, Constance?” 

“Very happy, indeed. Oh, you foolish boy, 
did I not see your face at the theatre last night ! 
Oh, foolish boy!” 

She wore a little bunch of violets at her breast. 

She took them and held them out to him. 
“Give them to her with my love,” she said. 

She bent forward, kissed him upon the forehead, 
and left the room without even looking back. 

A noblewoman always. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


“love crowns the deed” 

T he duke stood on the pavement outside Lord 
Camborne’s house in Grosvenor Street. 

It was still pouring heavy drops of rain, which 
beat a tattoo upon his umbrella. 

He glanced back at the massive green-painted 
door which the butler had just closed behind 
him. Never again would that hospitable door 
open for him! He would see none of his kind 
friends any more. Gerald, who had been as a 
brother to him for so long, would never shake 
him by the hand again — he knew Lord Hayle’s 
temperament too well to expect it. 

Constance, beautiful, frank, and stately, had 
vanished from his life. The earl, a prince of the 
Church and a princely old man, would never again 
tell him his genial and courtly stories of the past. 

The duke stood there alone. Alone! — the 
word tolled in his ears like a bell, making a melan- 
choly accompaniment to the rain. 

He began to walk towards Bond Street in a 
shaken and melancholy mood. 

How swift and strange it all was! How a few 
months had altered all his life, utterly and irrevo- 
cably! An infinitesimal time back he had not a 
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care in the world. He was Prince Fortunatus, 
enjoying every moment of his life and position 
in a dignified and becoming fashion. 

And what was he now? 

He laughed a small, bitter laugh as he asked 
himself the question. He was still the Duke of 
Paddington, the owner of millions, the proprietor 
of huge estates, perhaps the most highly-placed 
young man in England. Even now it was not 
too late to undo much of what he had done. 
Everything would be condoned and forgiven to 
such a man as he. 

He could buy a great yacht, go round the world 
for a year with a choice society of friends of his 
own standing, and when he returned Court and 
Society would welcome him with open arms once 
more — ^all this he understood very well. ‘ 

He had but to say a few words and all that was 
now slipping away from him would be his own 
once more. 

Struggles against conscience and convictions 
are either protracted or very short. The pro- 
tracted struggle was over in his case. He had 
fought out the battle long before. His public 
action on the night before had been the outcome. 
But there was still the last after-temptation to be 
faced, the final and conclusive victory to be won. 

It was not far from Lord Camborne's town 
house to Bond Street, but during the distance the 
battle within the young man’s mind raged fiercely. 

He must not be blamed. The whole of his 


'‘Love Crowns the Deed’’ 317 

past life must be taken into consideration. It 
must be remembered that he had just been en- 
during a succession of shocks, and it must also 
be taken into account that no one feels the same 
enthusiasm on a grey, wet morning, when he is 
alone, as he does in a brilliant, lighted place at 
midnight, surrounded by troops of friends and 
sympathisers. 

A tiny urchin, wet and ragged, with bare feet, 
came pattering round the comer. Under his 
arm he held a bundle of pink papers in an oil-skin 
wrapper. In front of him, as a sort of soiled 
apron, was the limp contents-bill of an evening 
paper. 

The duke saw his own name upon it. He 
realised that by now, of course, the early editions 
of all the evening papers were on the streets, and 
that they had copied the news from the Daily 
Wire. 

“ Pyper, m’lord!” said the urchin, turning up a 
shrewd and dirty face to the duke, who shook 
his head and would have passed on. 

“Yer wouldn’t sye no, m’lord, if yer noo the 
noos!” said the child. “ ’Ere ’s a bloomin’ noo 
hactress wot ’s goin’ to beat the bloomin’ ’ead orf 
of all the other gels, just a cert she is! And 
there ’s a mad dook wot ’s gone and give all is 
oof to the pore! P’raps I shell get a bit of it — I 
don’t fink! — ’ave a pyper, sir?” 

The impish readiness of the boy amused the 
duke, though his words stung. Yes! all the world 


The Socialist 


318 

was ringing with his name. The knowledge, or 
rather the realisation of what he had known 
before, acted as a sudden tonic. In a swift 
moment he set his teeth and braced himself up. 
A mad duke, was he ? — an contraire, he felt 
particularly sane! The past was over and done 
— let it be so. The future was before him — let 
him welcome it and be strong If he was indeed 
mad, then it should be a fine madness — a madness 
of living for humanity! 

He looked at the pinched and anxious face of 
the boy. A sudden thought struck him. He 
would begin with the boy. 

“Hungry?’’ he said. 

“Not ’arf!” said the boy. 

“Father and mother?” 

“Old man’s doin’ five years, old woman’s 
dead — Lock Orspital.” 

“Home?” 

“Occasional, as you might sye,” said the imp 
reflectively; “but Hadelphi Harches as hoften 
as not — blarst ’em!” 

“Very well,” said the duke. “Now you’re 
going to have as much as you like to eat, good 
clothes, and a happy life if you come with me. 
I ’ll see you through.” 

‘ ‘ Straight ? — ^no bloomin’ reformatory ? ’ ’ 

“Come along with me, you little devil,” said 
the duke genially. “ Do you think I ’m going to 
let you in? If you do — scoot!” 

“I’m on,” said the child, much reassured at 


“Love Crowns the Deed’* 319 

being called a little devil. “ Carn’t be much worse 
off than nah, wotever ’appens.” 

Two cabs were found at the comer. 

“Jump in that one, ” the duke said, pointing to 
the last. “Follow me,” he said to the driver, 
getting into the first cab as he did so, and 
giving the address of Rose’s house in West- 
minster. 

The two cabs started without comment or 
question. 

There was something very authoritative about 
his Grace of Paddington sometimes. 

The two cabs drove up to the little house in 
Westminster just as the rain cleared off, and a 
gleam of sunlight bursting through the clouds 
shone on the budding trees which topped the high 
wall of the Westminster sanctuary and jewelled 
them with prismatic fires. High above, the 
towers of the Abbey seemed washed and clean, 
rising into an air purged for a moment of grime 
and smoke, while the wet leaden roof of the nave 
shone like silver. 

James Fabian Rose was on the doorstep of his 
house, and in the act of unlocking the door with 
his latchkey. 

“Hallo!” he said. “So you’re back, duke — 
home again! The ordeal is over, then!” 

“Yes, it ’s quite over,” the duke answered. 

“Who’s this ruffian?” said Rose, smiling at 
the little newsboy. 

“ A recruit!” the duke said. “I’m responsible 


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The Socialist 


for him for the future. And meanwhile he ’s 
confoundedly hungry.’' 

“ So I bloomin’ well am, ” said the imp — ^though 
“blooming” was not the precise word he used. 

Rose took the urchin by the ear.- 

“Come along, embryo Socialist,” he said; 
“there ’s lots to eat inside — I ’ll take him to the 
kitchen, duke, and meet you in a moment in my 
study. My wife ’s in the kitchen helping the 
cook. She ’ll see to this youngster.” 

The duke paid the cabmen. As he gave half- 
a-crown to the second man, the fellow leaned 
down from his box and said, “ God bless you, my 
lord. I knew you as soon as you got into my 
cab. It ’ll be many years before you know the 
good you done last night. People like us know 
wot you done and are goin’ to do. I arst you to 
remember that.” 

He gave a salute with his whip and clattered 
away. 

The duke went into the house. 

As the door closed behind him and he stood 
alone in the narrow hall, the final revelation, the 
complete realisation came to him. 

Mechanically he took off his wet overcoat and 
bowler hat, hanging them upon the rack. He 
put his dripping umbrella in the stand and went 
upstairs to the first floor. • 

Rose’s study was on the first floor, facing the 
drawing-room. 

He opened the door and went in. 


Love Crowns the Deed ” 


321 


The room, lined with books, a working-room, 
was rather dark. It did not face the newly- 
arrived sun. 

But a dancing fire burned upon the hearth, 
and in a chair by the side of it Mary Marriott 
sat alone. 

Her face was pale, she wore a long, flowing 
tea-gown, round her feet were scattered the 
innumerable daily papers in which she had been 
reading the extraordinary chorus of praise for her 
triumph of the night before. 

She was leaning back in a high-backed arm- 
chair covered in green Spanish leather, looking 
like one of Sargeant’s wonderful portraits that 
catch up eye and heart into a sort of awe at such 
cunning and splendour of presentation. 

The duke stopped upon the threshold for a 
second — only for a second. He had known what 
he had come to do directly he was in the house — 
immediately he had entered the house and felt 
the influence which pervaded it. 

He went quickly up to her and sank on his 
knees beside her chair. 

He took her white hands in his — ^things of 
carved ivory, with a soul informing them. An 
hour ago he had held another pair of hands as 
beautiful as these. 

Her face flushed deeply, her eyes grew wide, 
her lips parted. She tried to draw her hands 
away. 

The words burst from her lips as if she had no 


322 


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power to control them. Her soul spoke, her 
heart spoke; it was an absolute avowal. But 
conscience, her sense of right and duty, her high 
thought for him and for herself spoke also. 

“ No, no ! It is dishonourable, you are vowed ! ” 

He held her fast, the strong male impulse 
dominated her, she was sick to death with sur- 
render. 

“ But you love me, Mary?” 

“Yes! — oh, what am I saying? God help me! 
— go, for you are a gentleman, and must preserve 
our hearts unstained!” 

“ Darling!” he cried, “ God is with us. I break 
no troth! All that is over and done — I am free, 
I am yours.” 

He had her little hands in his, tight, close — ^ah, 
close! 

Swift, passionate words come from his lips, 
fierce loving words caught up in sobs, broken with 
the hot tears of happiness in that he is so blessed 
and she so dear! 

Her face, in its supreme loveliness, its tender- 
ness, its joy, is turned full to his now. 

The river of his speech rushes down upon her 
heart, surging over her. His words catch her up 
upon their flood, her will seems to her merged 
in his, she swoons with love. 

For her! For her — ^this wonder is for her! It 
is an echo from the love of the august parents in 
the sweet garden of Eden. 

Gone is the world, the world in which she has 


Love Crowns the Deed ” 323 

always moved. Gone are ideals and causes, gone 
are art and triumph, homage and success! Gone 
— vanished utterly away — ^while her own lover 
holds her hands in his. 

She bent her lovely head. No longer did she 
look up into her lover’s face with happy eyes. 
A deep flush suffused her face and the white 
column of her neck. 

“ So you see, dearest — best, I had to tell you. 
This is the moment when the love that throngs and 
swells over a man’s heart bursts all bonds of 
repression and surges out in a great flood. Oh! 
darling! there has never been any one like you — 
there will never be any one like you again! My 
love and my lady, dare I ask you to be mine? 
Oh, I don’t know — I can’t say! I kneel before 
you as a man kneels before a shrine. I wonder 
that I have even words to speak to you, so peer- 
less, so gracious, and so beautiful!” 

His voice dropped and broke for a moment. 
He could say no more. Mary said no word. 
The firelight made flickering gleams in the great 
masses of dead-black hair. The wonderful face 
was hidden by the white hands which she had 
withdrawn from his. 

His own strong hands were clasped upon her 
knees. 

They shook and trembled violently. 

What was she thinking? How did she receive 
his words? — his winged and fiery words. He 
knelt there in an agony of doubt. 


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Then, in one swift access of passion, his mood 
changed to one of greater power. 

She was a woman, and therefore to be won! 
The clear, strong thought came down upon him 
like fire from heaven. He knew then that he was 
her conqueror, the man she must have to be her 
mate, her strength, her lover! 

His strong arms were round her. They held her 
close. “Darling!’' he whispered, “my arms are 
the home for you. That is what the old Roman 
poet said. Horace said it in the vineyards and 
the sun. I say it now. See, you are mine, mine! 
— only mine! You shall never break away, my 
own, incomparable lady and love!” 

The whole world went away from her and was 
no more. She only knew, in a super-sensual 
ecstasy, that his kisses fell upon her cheek like 
a hot summer wind. 

She found a little voice, a little, crushed, happy 
voice. 

“But you are a duke, you are so much 
that is great! I am only Mary Marriott, the 
actress!” 

“You are only the supreme genius of the stage. 
I am the greatest man in the world because you 
love me. Mary, it is just like that — and that is 
all.” 

She kissed him. He knew the supreme moment . 
All life, all love, all nature were revealed to 
him in one flash of joy for which there is no 
name. 


“ Love Crowns the Deed 325 

Both of them heard an echo of the harps that 
the saints were playing in another world. 

The whole heavenly orchestra was sounding an 
accompaniment to their story. 

“Love!’^ 

“Love!” 

“ Husband!” 

“Wife!” 

There was a knock at the door. 

“Please, miss,” said the housemaid, “lunch is 
ready. Mr. Goodrich has come, your Grace. 
And the downstairs rooms are full of gentlemen 
of the press. And there ’s men with photographic 
cameras, too. I Ve asked the master what I am 
to do, but he only laughs, miss! I can’t get 
anything out of him. But lunch is ready!” 

“Sweetheart,” the duke said, “lunch is ready! 
There ’s a fact! Let ’s cling to it ! And if Rose 
is laughing, let ’s laugh, too, and dodge the 
journalists!” 

“It will be a very happy laughter, John,” she 
said. 

As the couple came into the luncheon-room — 
which was full of the leaders of the socialistic 
movement — Mr. Goodrich cast a swift glance at 
the duke and Mary, and then left the place with 
an unobtrusive air. 

The Daily Wire had no evening edition. 

But it had an extraordinary reputation for 
being “first there” with intimate news at break- 
fast time. 


EPILOGUE 


PON the Chelsea Embankment there is a 



LJ house which, for some months after its 
new occupants had taken possession of it, was 
an object of considerable interest to those who 
passed by. 

People used to point there, at that time, and tell 
each other that “That’s where the Socialist duke 
and his actress wife have gone to live. The Duke 
of Paddington — you know ! — gave up all his pos- 
sessions, or nearly all, to be held in trust for the 
Socialists. They say that he ’s half mad, never 
recovered from being captured by those burglars 
on the night of the big railway smash on the 
G.E.R.” 

“Silly Juggins!” would be the reply. “Wish 
I 'd have had it. You would n’t see me giving 
it all up — not half!” 

But for several years the house has been just 
like any ordinary house and few people point to 
it or talk about it any more. 

There have been hundreds of sensations since 
the duke and his wife settled down in Chelsea. 

It was about one o’clock in the afternoon. 

The duke sat in his library in Cheyne Walk. 


327 


Epilogue 

It was a large and comfortable room, surrounded 
by books, with a picture here and there which 
the discerning eye would have immediately seen 
to be of unusual excellence, and, indeed, sur- 
prising in such a house as this. A barrister earn- 
ing his two thousand a year, a successful doctor 
not quite in the first rank, a county court Judge 
or a Clerk in the Houses of Parliament would 
have had just such a room — ^save only for the 
three pictures. 

The duke had changed considerably in appear- 
ance during the past five years. 

The boyishness had departed. The serenity 
and impassivity of a great prince who had never 
known anything but a smooth seat high upon 
Olympus had gone also. 

The face, now strong with a new kind of 
strength, showed the marks and gashes of Ex- 
perience. It was the mask of a man who had 
done, suffered, and learned, but it was, neverthe- 
less, not a very happy face. 

There was, certainly, nothing of discontent in it. 
But there was a persistent shadow of thought 
— a brooding. 

Much water had flowed under the bridge since 
the night at the theatre when he had made a 
public renunciation of almost everything that 
was his. 

Life had not been placid, and for many reasons. 
There had been the long and terribly difficult 
breaking away from his own class and order, for 


328 


The Socialist 


he had not been allowed to go into outer dark- 
ness” without a protracted struggle. 

All the forces of the world had arrayed 
themselves against him. The wisest, the most 
celebrated, the highest placed, had combined 
together in that they might prevent this dreadful 
thing. 

He was not as other men. 

Hardly a great and stately house in England 
but was connected with him by ties of kindred. 
His falling away was a menace to all of them in 
its opening of possibilities, a real grief to many 
of them. There had been terrible hours of 
expostulation, dreadful scenes of sorrow and 
recrimination. 

Compromise had assailed him on every side. 
His wife would have been received everywhere — 
it was astonishing how Court and Society had 
discovered that Mary Marriott was one of them- 
selves after all — a “Mem-Sahib.” He could do 
what he liked within reason, and still keep his 
place. 

A prime minister had pointed out to him that 
no one at all would object to his coimtenance of 
the Socialistic party. He might announce his 
academic adherence to Socialism as often and as 
loudly as he pleased. It would, indeed, be a 
good thing for Socialism, in which — so his lordship 
was pleased to say — ^there was indubitably a germ 
of economic good. All great movements had 
begun slowly. These things must ripen into good 


Epilogue 329 

and prove themselves by their own weight. But 
it was economically wrong, and subversive of all 
theories of progress, that a sudden and over- 
powering weight should be put into one side of 
the scale by a single individual. 

‘‘It will disturb ever3rthmg” said the Prime 
Minister. “ And any one who, from an individual 
opinion, disturbs the balance of affairs is doing 
grave, and perhaps irreparable, harm.’' 

In short, they would have allowed him to do 
anything, but give up his property. They would 
have let him marry any one if he did not give up 
his PROPERTY. 

For all of them had won their property and 
sovereignty by predatory strength throughout the 
centuries, or the years. Landowners of ancient 
descent, millionaires of yesterday, all knew the 
power of what they held and had. All loved 
that power and were determined to keep it for 
themselves and their descendants. . . . And, 
all had sons, young and generous of mind as yet, 
to whom the duke’s example might prove an 
incentive to a repetition of such an abnegation. 

They were very shrewd and far-seeing, all 
these people. Collectively, they were the most 
cultured, beautiful, and charming folk in England. 
They were the rulers of England, and by birth, 
temper, and inheritance he was one of them. The 
pressure put upon him had been enormous, the 
strain terrible. 

A resolution made in a moment of great emo- 


330 


The Socialist 


tion, and an enthusiasm fostered by every incident 
of time and circumstance, seems a very different 
thing regarded dispassionately when the blood is 
cool, and, so to speak, the footlights are lowered, 
the curtain down, the house empty. 

Once, indeed, he had nearly given in. He had 
been sent for privately to the Palace, and some 
wise and kindly words had been spoken to him 
there by A Personage to whom he could not but 
listen with the gravest and most loyal attention. 

Compromise was once more suggested, he was 
bidden to remember his order and his duty to it. 
He was again told that his opinions were his own, 
that short of taking the irrevocable step he might 
do almost anything. 

Nor does a young man whose inherited in- 
stincts are all in fierce war with his new con- 
victions listen unmoved to gracious counsel such 
as this from the Titular Head of all nobility, for 
whose ancestors his own had bled on many a 
historic field. 

He had stood quite alone. Mary Marriott, 
his wife that was to be, had given him no help. 
Tender, loving, ready to marry him at any cost, 
she nevertheless stood aloof from influencing his 
decision in the hour of trial. 

He tried hard to get help and support from her, 
to make her love confirm his resolution, but he 
tried in vain. With the clear sanity of a noble 
mind, the girl refused to throw so much as a 
feather-weight into the scale of the balance, though 


Epilogue 331 

in this she also suffered (secretly) as much as he. 

Then he went to the others, sick and sore from 
the buffetings he was receiving at all hands — 
from his own order and from the great public 
press they influenced, from the great solid middle- 
class of the country which, more than anything 
else perhaps, preserves the level of wise-dealing 
and order in England. The others were as dumb 
as the girl he loved. It was true that a section 
of the Socialist party, the noisy, blatant — and 
possibly insincere — big drum party, hailed him as 
prophet, seer, martyr, and Galahad in one. But 
there was a furious vulgarity about this sort of 
thing which was more imnerving, and made him 
more wretched than anything else at all. Such 
people spoke a different language from his own, 
a different language from that of Fabian Rose and 
his friends. They said the same thing perhaps — 
he was inclined to doubt even that sometimes — 
but the dialect offended fastidious ears, the atti- 
tude offended one accustomed to a certain come- 
liness and reticence even in the new life and 
surroundings into which he had been thrown. 
Both the Pope and General Booth, for example, 
serve One Master, and live for Our Lord. But it 
is conceivable that if the Bishop of Rome could 
be present at a mass meeting of the Salvation 
Army in the Albert Hall, he would leave it a very 
puzzled and disgusted prelate indeed. 

Rose and his friends avoided influencing the 
the duke, of set purpose. They were high- 


332 


The Socialist 


minded men and women, but they were also 
psychologists, and trained deeply in the one 
science which can dominate the human mind and 
human opinion. 

They wanted the Duke of Paddington badly. 
They wanted the enormous impetus to the move- 
ment that his accession would bring; they wanted 
the great revenues which would provide sinews 
of war for a vast campaign. But they knew that 
nothing would be more disastrous than an illus- 
trious convert who would fall away. The duke 
had been left alone. 

For a month after the few words he had 
addressed to the people at the theatre supper, 
the struggle had continued. His name was in 
every one's mouth. It would not be too much 
to say that all Europe set itself to wonder what 
would be the outcome. The journals of England 
and the Continent teemed with denunciation, 
praise, sneers. Tolstoi sent a long message — 
the thing fermented furiously, and, instructed by 
the journalists, even the man in the street recog- 
nised that here was something more than even 
the renunciation of one man of great possessions 
for an idea — ^that it would create — one way or the 
other — Si disintegrating or binding force, that a 
precedent would establish itself, that vast issues 
were involved. 

After a week of it, the duke disappeared. Only 
a few of his friends knew where he was, and they 
were pledged not to say. He was fighting it out 


Epilogue 333 

alone in a little mountain village of the Riviera — 
Roquebume, which hangs like a bird’s nest on the 
Alps between Monte Carlo and Mentone, and 
where the patient friendly olive growers of the 
mountain steppes never knew who the quiet 
young Englishman was who sat in the little 
auherge under the walls of the Saracen stronghold 
and watched the goats and the children rolling 
in the warm dusk, or stared steadfastly out over 
the Mediterranean far below, to where the 
distant cliffs of Corsica gleamed like pearls in 
the sun. 

He came back to England, his decision made, 
his first resolve strengthened into absolute, assured 
purpose. The ruffians who had kidnapped him 
on the night of the railway accident had been 
unable to torture him into buying his freedom. 
For what to him would have been nothing — a 
penny to a beggar — he might have gone free. 
And yet he had nearly died rather than give in. 
Save for the chance or Providence which brought 
his rescuers to him in the very last moment, he 
would have died — ^there is no doubt about it. 

Now again, he was firm as granite. His mind 
was made up, nothing could alter it nor move it. 
His hand had been placed upon the plough. It 
was going to remain there, and he left the palms 
and orange groves of the South a man doubly 
vowed. He had married at once. Mary Marriott 
became a duchess. Several problems arose. 
Should he drop his title — ^that was one of them* 


334 


The Socialist 


He refused to do so, and in his refusal was strongly 
backed up by the real leaders of the movement. 

“ You were bom Duke of Paddington, ’’ said Rose, 
“and there is no earthly reason why you should 
become Mr. John something or other. It would 
only be a pretence, and if you do, I shall change 
my own name to James Fabian Turnip! and as 
I have always told you Socialism never says that 
all men are equal — ^true Socialism that is. It only 
says that all men have equal rights 1 At the same 
time some of our noisy friends will go for you — 
though you won’t mind that!” They did “go 
for” him. Despite the fact that he had given 
up everything — his friends and relatives, his 
order, his tastes, there was not wanting a certain 
section of the baser socialistic press which spoke 
of “The young man with great possessions” who 
would give up much but not all; like all pro- 
fessional sectarians, rushing to the Gospels in an 
extremity to pick and choose a few comfortable 
texts from the history of One whom they alter- 
nately held up as the First Great Socialist, and 
then denied His definite claims to be the Veritable 
Son of God. 

The duke minded their veiled sarcasms not at 
all; an open attack was never dared. But the 
attitude gave him pain, and much material 
forethought. They were always quoting “The 
Christ,” “The Man Jesus.” They continually 
pointed out — as it suited them upon occasion — 
that private property, privilege, and monopoly 


Epilogue 335 

were attacked by Jesus, who left no doubt as to 
the nature of His mission. 

They said, and said truly enough, that “He 
pictured Dives, a rich man, plunged into torment, 
for nothing else than for being rich when another 
was poor; while Lazarus, who had been nothing 
but poor and afflicted, is comforted and consoled. 
For that, those Evangelical-Nonconformists, the 
Pharisees, who were covetous, derided him. By 
the force of His personality (it was not the scourge 
that did it!). He drove the banking fraternity 
(who practised usury then as they do to-day) 
out of their business quarters in the Temple, and 
named them thieves. ‘Woe to you rich, who 
lay up treasures, property, on earth,’ He cried. 
And ‘ Blessed are ye poor, who relinquish property 
and minister to each other’s needs,’ He cried.” 
And yet, in the same breath with which they 
spoke of this Supreme Man they denied His 
Divinity, trying to prove Him, at the same mo- 
ment, an inspired Socialist, and what is more 
a very practical One, and also a Dreamer who 
spoke in simile of His claims to Godhead, or, and 
this was the more logical conclusion of their 
premisses, a conscious Pretender and Liar. 

“He was,” they said, “a Seer, as the ancient 
prophets were, as John, Paul, Francis of Assisi, 
Luther, Swedenborg, Fox, and Wesley, were. 
Such men, modern Spiritualists and Theosophists 
would call ‘mediums.’ So great was He in 
wisdom and power of the spirit, that in His own 


33 6 


The Socialist 


day He was called ‘the Son of God,' as well as 
‘the Son of Man,' — ^that is, the pre-eminent, the 
God-like, Man." 

Who need dispute over the stories of the 
“miracles" wrought by Him and His disciples? 
To-day, no scientific person would say they were 
impossible; we have learned too much of the 
power of “mind" over “matter," for that, by 
now. There were well-attested marvels in all 
ages, and in our own living day, which were not 
less “miraculous" than the Gospel miracles. 
Therefore, they would not reject the story of 
Jesus because He was affirmed to have worked 
many signs and wonders. 

The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, was a 
piece of practical politics which was epitomised 
in the saying “Love one another." The clear 
and definite statements which Jesus made then 
ought to obtain to-day in their literal letter. 
The equally clear and definite statements which 
Jesus made as to His own Divine Origin were the 
misty utterances of a “medium"! The Incarna- 
tion was not a fact. 

“Love one another" was the supreme rule of 
conduct — ^which made it odd and bewildering 
that the young man who had given up everything 
should be covertly assailed for holding fast to the 
name in which he had been born. But the duke 
steeled himself. He honestly realised that class 
hatred must still exist for generations and genera- 
tions. It was not the fault of one class, or the 


Epilogue 337 

Other, it was the inevitable inheritance of blood. 
Yet he found himself less harsh in spirit than most 
of those who forgot his sacrifices, and grudged him 
his habits of speaking in decent English, of 
courteous manner, of taste, of careful attention 
to his finger nails. To his sorrow he found that 
many of them still hated him for these things — 
despite ever3rthing they hated him. For his part 
he merely disliked, not them, but the absence in 
them of these things. But from the first he found 
his way was hard and that his renunciation was 
a renunciation indeed. He threw himself into 
the whole Socialistic movement with enormous 
energy, but his personal consolations were found 
in the sympathy and society of people like the 
Roses, and their set — cultured and brilliant men 
and women who were, after all was said and done, 
‘ ‘ Gentlefolk bom ! ’ ’ 

After his marriage, months had been taken up 
with the legal business, protracted and beset with 
every sort of difficulty, by which he had devised 
his vast properties to the movement. 

He was much criticised for retaining a modest 
sum of two thousand pounds a year for himself 
and his wife — ^until James Fabian Rose with a 
pen dipped in vitriol and a tongue like a whip 
of steel neatly flayed the objectors and finished 
them off with a few characteristic touches of his 
impish Irish wit. 

Then — would he go to court ? — a down-trodden 
working-man could n’t go to court. If he was 


338 The Socialist 

going to be a Socialist, let him be a Socialist — 
and so on. 

For this sort of thing, again, the duke did not 
care. The only critic and judge of his actions 
was himself, his conscience. He went to court, 
Mary was presented also. They were kindly re- 
ceived. High minds can appreciate highminded- 
ness, however much the point of view may differ. 

Mary was two things. First of all she was the 
Duchess of Paddington. It was made quite plain 
to her that, though perhaps she was not the 
duchess for whom many people had hoped, she 
was indubitably of the rank. Gracious words 
were said to her as duchess. Even kinder words 
were said to her upon another and more private 
occasion, as one of those great artists whom 
Royalty has always been delighted to honour — 
recognising a sovereignty quite alien to its own 
but stiU real! 

As for the duke, he had a certain privilege at 
the levees. It belonged to his house. It was 
his right to stand a few paces behind the Lord 
Chamberlain, and when any representatives of 

the noble family of appeared before the 

Sovereign, to draw his court sword and step near 
to the King — ^an old historic custom the reasons 
for which were nearly forgotten, but which was 
still part of the pomp and pageantry of the Royal 
palace. 

Upon one occasion after his remmciation, he 
appeared at St. James’s and exercised his ancient 


Epilogue 339 

right. There was no opposition, nothing unkind, 
upon the faces of any of the great persons there. 
The ceremony was gone through with all its tra- 
ditional dignity, but every one there felt that it 
was an assertion — and a farewell! The duke 
himself knew it at the time, and as he left St. 
James’s he may be pardoned if, for a moment, 
old memories arose in him, and that his eyes were 
dimmed with a mist of unshed tears as the modest 
brougham drove him back to his house in Cheyne 
Walk. How kind they had all been! How 
sympathetic in their way, how highly bred! Yes! 
it was worth while to be one of them! It was 
worth while to live up to the traditions which so 
many of them often forgot. But one could still 
do that, one could still keep the old hereditary 
chivalry of race secret and inviolable in the soul, 
and yet live for the people, love the poor, the 
outcast, the noisy, the vulgar, those whom Our 
Lord, who counselled tribute to reason, loved 
best of all! . . . These things are an indication, 
not a history of the events of the first eighteen 
months after the Duke of Paddington’s marriage. 

The story provides a glimpse into some of his 
difficulties, that is to say, difficulties which were 
semi-public and patent to his intimate circle of 
friends, if not, perhaps, to all the rest of the world. 
Nevertheless, giving all that he had given, he 
found himself confronted with yet another prob- 
lem, which was certainly the worst of all. He 
had married Mary, he loved her and reverenced 


340 


The Socialist 


her as he thought no man had ever reverenced 
and loved a girl before. She loved and appreciated 
him also. Theirs was a perfect welding and 
fusion of identity and hopes. But she was an 
actress. Her love for her Art had been direct 
and overwhelming from the very first. She had 
given all her life and talent to it. For her it had 
all the sacredness of a real vocation. She was, 
and always would be, a woman vowed to her Art 
as truly and strongly as an innocent maiden 
puts on the black veil and vows herself to Christ. 
Nor is this a wrong comparison, because there are 
very many ways of doing things to the glory of 
God, and God gives divers gifts to divers of his 
children. And so this also had to be faced by 
the duke. Since the night upon which her great 
opportunity had come to her, Mary had never 
looked back. 

Her success, then, had been supreme and over- 
whelming, and, apart from all the romantic cir- 
cumstances which had attended it, her position 
upon the stage had grown into one which was 
entirely apart from anything outside her Art. 

The world now — after five years — still knew 
that she was a duchess — if she chose, that was 
how the world put it — but the fact had little or 
no significance for the public. She was just 
Mary Marriott — ^their own Mary — and if she so 
often spent her genius in interpreting the brilliant 
socialistic plays of James Fabian Rose — ^well, 
what of that? They went to see her play in the 


Epilogue 341 

plays, not, in the first instance, to see the play 
itself. And even after that, Rose was always 
charming — ^there was always a surprise and a 
delightfully subversive point of view. One went 
home to Bayswater and West Kensington “full 
of new ideas,’' and certainly full of enthusiasm 
for beautiful Mary Marriott. “What a darling 
she is, mother!” . . . “Charming indeed, Gertie. 
And do not forget that she is, after all, the Duchess 
of Paddington. Of course the duke gave up his 
fortune to the Socialists some years ago, but they 
are still quite wealthy. Maud knows them. 
Your Aunt Maud was there to an afternoon re- 
ception only last week. Every one was there. 
All the leading lights! They have renounced 
society, of course, but quite a lot of the best 
people pop in all the same — so your Aunt Maud 
tells me — and, of course, all the leading painters 
and actors and writers, and so on. And, of 
course, they can go anywhere they like directly 
they give up this amusing socialistic pose. 
They ’re even asked down to Windsor. The King 
tolerates the young duke with his mad notions, 
and of course Miss Marriott is received on other 
grounds too — like Melba and Patti and Irving, 
don’t you know. Nothing like real Art, Gertie! 
It takes you anywhere.” Such statements as 
these were only half true. Every one came to the 
duke’s house who was any one in the world of Art. 
But they came to see his wife, not to see him. 
And despite the rumours of Bayswater his own 


342 


The Socialist 


class left him severely alone by now. The years 
had passed, his property was no longer his, he 
had very definitely “dropped out.’' The duke 
did not care for “artistic” people, and he knew 
that they didn’t care for him. He could not 
understand them, and on their part they thought 
him dull and uninteresting. There was no com- 
mon ground upon which they could meet. Many 
of the people who came were actors and actresses, 
and when it had been agreed between Mary and 
her husband that she was to continue her artistic 
career, he had not contemplated the continual 
invasion and interruption of his home life which 
this was to mean. He had a prodigious admira- 
tion for Mary’s talent; it had seemed, and still 
seemed, to him the most wonderful thing in the 
world. His ideal had been from the first a life 
of noble endeavour for the good of the world. 
He had given up everything he held dear, and 
would spend the rest of his life in active service 
for the cause of Socialism. Mary would devote 
her supreme art to the same cause. But there 
would also be a hidden, happy life of love and 
identity of aim which would be perfect. They had 
done exactly as he had proposed. His enthusiasm 
for the abstract idea of Socialism had never grown 
less — ^was stronger than ever now. Mary’s earnest- 
ness and devotion was no less than his. In 
both of them the flame burned pure and brightly 
still. 

But the duke knew by this time that nothing 


343 


Epilogue 

had turned out as he expected and hoped. His 
home life was non-existent. His work was in- 
cessant, but the Cause seemed to be making no 
progress whatever. It remained where it had 
stood when he had just made his great renun- 
ciation. 

The vested interests of Property were too 
strong. A Liberal and semi-socialistic govern- 
ment had tried hard, but had somehow made 
a mess of things. The House of Lords, had re- 
fused its assent to half a dozen bills, and its 
members had only smiled tolerantly at the Duke 
of Paddington’s fervid speeches in favour of the 
measures which were sent up from the Lower 
House. And worse than this, the duke saw, 
the Socialists saw, every one saw, that the country 
was in thorough sympathy with the other party, 
that at the next general election the Conservatives 
would be returned by an overwhelming majority. 
And there was one other thing, a personal, but 
very real thing, which contributed to the young 
man’s general sense of weariness and futility 
of endeavour. He loved his wife with the same 
dogged and passionate devotion with which he 
had won her. He knew well that her own love 
for him was as strong as ever. But, as far as she 
was concerned, there was so little time or oppor- 
tunity for an expression of it. She was a public 
woman, a star of the first rank in Art and in 
affairs. Her day was occupied in rehearsals at 
the theatre or in public appearances upon the 


344 


The Socialist 


socialistic platform. Her nights were exercised 
in the practice of her Art upon the stage. 

Sometimes he went to see his wife act, but his 
pride and joy in her achievement was always 
tempered and partly spoiled by a curious — but 
very natural — physical jealousy which he was 
quite unable to subdue. It offended and wounded 
all his instincts to see some painted posing actor 
holding his own wife — ^the Duchess of Paddington ! 
— ^in his arms and making a pretended love to her. 
It was all pretence, of course; it was simply part 
of the inevitable mechanism of “Art” (“Oh, 
damn Art,” he would sometimes say to himself 
very heartily), but it was beastly all the same. 
He had to meet the actor-men in private life. 
First with surprise, and then with a disgust for 
which he had no name, he watched their self- 
consciousness of pose, their invincible absorption 
in a petty self, their straining efforts to appear 
as gentlemen, their failure to convince any one 
but their own class that they were real human 
beings at all — ^that they were any more than 
empty shells into which the personality of this 
or that creative genius nightly poured the stuff 
that made the puppets work. No doubt his 
ideas were all wrong and distorted. But they 
were very real, and ever present with him. Nor 
was it nice to know that any horrid-minded rascal 
with a few shillings in his fob could buy the 
nightly right to sit and gloat over Mary's charm, 
Mary’s beauty. It was a violation of his in- 


Epilogue 345 

herited beliefs and impulses, though, if it had 
been another man’s wife, and not his own, he 
would probably not have cared in the least! 

So the Duke of Paddington sat in the library 
of his house in Chelsea. It was a Saturday 
afternoon. There was a matinee, and Mary had 
rushed off after an early Itmch. The duke felt 
very much alone. He had no particular engage- 
ment that afternoon. His correspondence he 
had finished during the morning, and he was now 
a little at a loss how to occupy his time. At the 
moment life seemed rather hollow and empty, 
the very aspect of his comfortable room was 
somehow distasteful, and, though he did not feel 
ill, he had a definite sensation of physical mis-ease. 

“I must have some exercise,” he thought to 
himself. “I suppose it ’s a touch of liver.” 

He debated whether he should go to the German 
gymnasium for an hour, to swim at the Bath 
Club, or merely to walk through the town. He 
decided for the walk. Thought and pedestrianism 
went well together, and the other two alternatives 
were not conducive to thought. He wanted to 
think. He wanted to examine his own sensa- 
tions, to analyse the state of his mind, to find 
out from himself and for himself if he really were 
unhappy and dissatisfied with his life, if he had 
made a frightful mistake or no. It was late 
autumn. The weather was neither warm nor 
cold. There was no fog nor rain, but everything 


346 


The Socialist 


was grey and cheerless of aspect. The sky was 
leaden, and there was a peculiar and almost 
sinister lividity in the wan light of the afternoon. 

He walked along the Embankment dreamily 
enough. The movement was pleasant — he had 
certainly not taken enough exercise lately 1 — 
and he tried to postpone the hour of thought, the 
facing of the question. 

When he had crossed the head of the Vauxhall 
Bridge road, and traversed the rather dingy 
purlieus of Horseferry, he came out by the Lords' 
entrance to the Houses of Parliament. The 
Victoria Tower in all its marvellous modem 
beauty rose up into the sky, white and incredibly 
massive against the background of grey. The 
house was sitting, so he saw from the distant, 
drooping flag above; but it was many months 
now since he had ventured into the Upper Cham- 
ber. As he came along his heart suddenly began 
to beat more rapidly than usual, and his face 
flushed a little. A small brougham just set down 
the Archbishop of Canterbury as the duke arrived 
at the door — ^the man whom in the past he had 
known so well and liked so much, Lord Camborne, 
to whose daughter the duke had been engaged — 
Lord Camborne, older now, stooping a little, but 
no less dignified and serene. Time had not 
robbed the bishop and earl of any of his stateliness 
of port, and the Primate of All England was still 
one of the most striking figures of the day. 

He turned and saw the duke. The two men 


Epilogue 347 

had never met nor spoken since the day upon 
which the younger had told of his new convic- 
tions. The archbishop hesitated for a moment. 
His fine old face grew red, and then paled again ; 
there was a momentary flicker of indecision about 
the firm, proud mouth. Then he held out his 
hand, with a smile, but a smile in which there was 
a great deal of sadness. 

“Ah, John!’’ he said, shaking his venerable 
head. “Ah, John! so we meet again after all 
these years. How are you? Happy, I hope? — 
God bless you, my dear fellow.” 

A pang, like a spear-thrust, traversed the young 
man’s heart as he took that revered and trembling 
hand. 

“I am well, your Grace,” he said slowly, “and 
I ’m happy.” 

“Thank God for it,” returned the archbishop, 
“ Who has preserved your Grace” — he put a special 
and sorrowful accent upon the form of address 
the younger man shared with him — for His own 
purposes, and has given you His grace! as I 
believe and hope.” 

And then, something kindly and human coming 
into his face and voice, the ceremonial gone from 
both, he said: “Dear boy, years ago I never 
thought that we should meet like this — as duke 
and as archbishop. I hoped that you would have 
called me father! And since dear Hayle’s death 
. . . Well, I am a lonely old man now, John. 
My daughter has other interests. I am not long 


348 


The Socialist 


for this world. I spend the last of my years in 
doing what I can for England, according to the 
light within me. As you do also, John, I don’t 
doubt it. Good-bye, good-bye — I am a little 
late as it is. Pray, as I pray, that we may all 
meet in Heaven.” 

And with these last kindly words the old man 
went away, and the Duke of Paddington never 
saw him again, for in five months he was dead 
and the Church mourned a wise and courtly 
prelate. 

The duke went on. Melancholy filled his 
mind. He never heard a voice now like that of 
the man he had just left. It brought back many 
memories of the past. He was n’t among the 
great of the world any more. The people who 
filled his house in Chelsea were clever and charm- 
ing no doubt. But they were n’t kis people. 
He had departed from the land of his inheritance. 
He was no longer a prince and a ruler among 
rulers and princes. The waters of Babylon were 
not as those of Israel, and in his heart he 
wept. 

... It was to be an afternoon of strain and 
stress. As he went up Parliament Street towards 
Trafalgar Square he met a long line of miserable 
sandwich men. Upon their wooden tabards he 
saw his wife’s name “ King’s Theatre — Miss 
Mary Marriott’s Hundredth Night,” and so 
forth. And as he turned into Pall Mall — for 
half unconsicously his feet were leading him to a 


Epilogue 349 

club in St. James’s Street to which he still be- 
longed — he received another shock. 

A victoria drove rapidly down the street of 
clubs, and in it, lovely and incomparable in her 
young matronhood, sat the Marchioness of 
Dover, Constance Camborne that had been, 
now the supreme leader and arbitrix of Vanity 
Fair. She saw him, she recognised him, and he 
knew it. But she made no sign, not a muscle 
of her face relaxed as the carriage whirled by. 
Once more the duke felt very much alone. 

He went into the club — it was the famous old 
Cocoa Tree — sat down and began to read the 
evening papers. He lay back upon the circular 
seat of padded crimson leather that surrounds 
the central column of the Tree itself. Few 
people were in the club this afternoon, and as he 
glanced upwards to where the chocolate-coloured 
column disappears through the high Georgian 
ceiling, a sense came to him that he was sur- 
rounded by the shades of those august personal- 
ities who had thronged this exclusive place of 
memories in the past — Lord Byron, Gibbon ; 
farther back, Lord Alvanley, Beau Brummell, 
and the ro3^al dukes of the Regency. Their 
pictures hung upon the walls — Speers, statesmen, 
royalties, they all seemed crowding out of the 
frames, and to be pressing upon him now. Stately 
figures all and each, ghostly figures of men who 
had lived and died in many ways, well or ill, but 


350 


The Socialist 


all people who had ruled — men of his own caste 
and clan. 

He was overwrought and tired. His imagina- 
tion, never a very insistent quality with him, 
was roused by the physical dejection of his nerves 
to an unusual activity. And in the back of his 
brain was the remembrances of recent meetings 
— ^the meeting with the Primate who might have 
been his father-in-law; the meeting with the 
radiant and high-bred young woman whose hus- 
band he himself might have been. 

... A grave servant in the club’s livery came 
up to him, with a pencilled memorandum upon a 
silver tray. 

“This has just come through by telephone, 
your Grace, ” he said. “The telephone boy did 
not know that your Grace was in the house, or he 
would have called you. As it was the boy took 
down the message.” This was the message: 

“Hoping to see you Bradlaugh Hall, Ber- 
mondsey, to-night. Slap-up meeting arranged, 
and a few words from you will be much appre- 
ciated. To-night we shall bump if not much 
mistaken. Wot O for the glorious cause. 

“Sam Jones, M.P.” 

The duke folded up the message and placed it 
in his pocket. 

Yes! he was now little more than the figure- 
head, the complacent doll, whose jerky movements 


Epilogue 351 

were animated and controlled by Labour Members 
of Parliament, captains of “hunger marchers” 
brigades and such-like “riff-raff” — ^no! of course 
“ salt of the earth!” 

Struggling with many conflicting thoughts — 
old hopes and desires now suddenly and startlingly 
reawakened, strong convictions up and arming 
themselves in array against inherited predis- 
position, a tired and not happy brain, at war 
with itself and all its environment — he rose from 
his seat and passed out of the room through the 
huge mahogany doors. He walked by the tiny 
room where the hall porter sits, and mounted 
the few stairs which lead to the lobby in front 
of the doors of the dining-rooms. The electric 
“column printer” machines were clicking and 
ticking, while the long white rolls of paper, im- 
printed in faint purple with the news of the last 
hour, came pouring slowly out of the glass case, 
while a much-buttoned page boy was waiting to 
cut up the slips, and paste them upon the green 
baize board under their respective headings. 

The duke went up to one of the machines, and 
held up the running cascade of printed paper. 
As he did so, this was what he saw and read : 

3.30. Mr. Arthur Burnside, the Brilliant 
Young Barrister, Socialist M.P. , and a Trustee 
OF THE Duke of Paddington’s Property Shar- 
ing Scheme, has been run over by a Motor 
Omnibus. The Injured Gentleman was at 


352 


The Socialist 


ONCE TAKEN TO THE HoUSE OF Mr. JaMES FaBIAN 
Rose behind the Abbey. 

LATER. Mr. Burnside is sinking fast. 
Sir Frederick Davidson gives no hope. Mr. 
Rose and all other Leaders of Socialist 
Party are away in Manchester except Duke 
Paddington, whose whereabouts are un- 
certain. 

The duke dropped the paper. The machine 
went on ticking and clicking, but he did not wish 
to read any more. 

So Burnside was dying! — Burnside who had 
been the impulse, the ultimate force which had 
finally directed his own change of attitude towards 
life and its problems, his great renunciation. 

Quite as in a dream, still without any vivid 
sense of the reality of things, the duke turned to 
the left, entered the lavatory, and began to wash 
his hands. He hardly knew what he was doing, 
but, suddenly, he heard his conscious brain asking 
him — “ Is this symbolic and according to a terrible 
precedent ? Of what are you washing your hands ? ’ ’ 

Then, putting the thought away from him, as 
a man fends off some black horror of the sleepless 
hours of night by a huge effort of will he went 
out of the place, found his hat and stick and got 
into a cab, telling the driver to go to Westminster 
as if upon a matter of life and death! 

Burnside lay quite pale and quiet in that very 


353 


Epilogue 

bedroom where the duke had once lain in pain 
and exhaustion — how many years ago it seemed 
now! how much further away than any mere 
measure of time as we know it by the calendar 
it really was I A discreet nurse in hospital 
uniform was there, sitting quietly by the bedside. 
A table was covered with bandages and bottles, 
there was a faint chemical fragrance in the air — 
iodoform perhaps — and a young doctor, left 
behind by the great ones who had departed, 
moved silently about the place. 

Burnside was conscious. He turned eyes in 
which the light and colour were fading towards 
the new arrival, 

“ Ah!” he said, in a voice which seemed to come 
from a great distance. “So there is some one 
after all! You opened the door to me in the past, 
duke. And it is strange that you have come 
here now, after all this time, to close it gently 
behind me again.” 

“My poor old fellow,” the duke said. “It’s 
heartbreaking to find you like this — you from 
whom we all hoped so much! But what . . . 
I mean, I wish Rose and all the rest of them could 
be here.” 

“Never mind, duke, you’re here. And Some 
One Else is coming soon.” 

The duke did not understand the words of the 
dying man. But he sat down beside the bed 
and held a hand that was ice-cold and the fingers 
of which twitched now and then. The duke felt. 


354 


The Socialist 


dimly, that there ought to be a clergyman here. 
In his own way he was a religious man. He went 
to church on Sundays and said “Our Father,'' 
and such variations of the prayer as suggested 
themselves to him, quite frequently. 

Of the constant Presence of the Supernatural 
or Supernormal in the life of the Catholic Church, 
the duke knew nothing at all. His spiritual life 
had never been more than an embryo; he was 
surrotmded by people, in the present, many of 
whom were frankly contemptuous of Christianity, 
some of whom avowedly hated it, others who 
called Jesus the Great Socialist, but denied His 
Divinity. He had never discussed rehgious mat- 
ters with his wife, except in the most casual and 
superficial way. Much as he loved her, certain 
as he was of her love for him, their lives were lived, 
to a certain extent, apart. Her Art, his work 
for Socialism, kept them busy in their own spheres 
— and her Art, also, had become a most powerful 
weapon of the socialistic crusade — and left them 
tired at the close of each crowded day. There 
was never time or opportunity for talk about 
religion — for confidences. The duke had known 
— had always had a sort of vague idea — ^that 
Burnside was what some people call “A High 
Churchman." He knew that his friend belonged 
to the Christian Social Union, was a friend of the 
Bishop of Birmingham, lived by a certain rule. 
But Burnside had never obtruded the Christian 
Social Union upon that larger and more militant. 


Epilogue 355 

that political socialism with which the duke was 
chiefly connected. Burnside had always known 
that the time was not yet ripe for that. The 
duke had never realised at all the quietly growing 
force within the English Catholic Church. 

. . . He held the hand of the dying man, and 
a singular sense of companionship, identity of 
feeling came to him, as he did so. It seemed to 
be stronger even than his grief and sorrow, and 
much as he had always liked and appreciated 
Burnside, he now experienced the sensation of 
being nearer to him than ever before. 

Burnside moved his head a little. “You can 
talk,” he said. “Thank God, my head is quite 
clear, and I am in hardly any pain. I have several 
hours yet to live, the doctors tell me. Something 
will happen to me in four or five hours, and I shall 
then pass away quite simply. Sir William, God 
bless him, did n’t tell me any of the soothing lies 
that doctors have to tell people. He saw the 
case was hopeless, and he was good enough to be 
explicit!” 

There was something so calm and certain in the 
barrister’s voice, that the other man’s nerves 
were calmed too. He saw the whole situation 
with that momentary certainty of intuition which 
comes to every one now and then, and which is a 
habit with a great soldier or doctor — a Lord 
Roberts or Sir William Gull. 

“Yes, let ’s talk, then,” he answered in a calm, 
even voice. “I need hardly tell you, old fellow. 


356 


The Socialist 


what this means to me, and what it means to the 
movement.” 

“You ’re getting very tired of the movement, 
duke!” the thin voice went on. 

The duke started ; the nurse held a cup of some 
stimulant to the lips of the dying man. There 
was a silence for a minute. 

“I don’t quite understand you, Burnside.” 

“But I understand you^ though I have never 
said so before. After all your splendid and 
wonderful renunciations, you are beginning to 
have doubts and qualms now. Tell the truth to 
a man who ’s dying!” 

The duke bowed his head. At that moment 
of mute confession, he knew the deep remorse that 
cowards and traitors know — ^traitors and cowards 
for whom circumstances have been too strong, 
who are convinced of the cause they support, but 
have been, in action or in thought, disloyal to it. 

Burnside spoke again. 

“But don’t be faint-hearted or discouraged,” 
he said. “The truths of what we call Socialism 
are as true as they ever were. But only a few 
Socialists, as yet, have realised the only lines 
upon which we can attack the great problem. 
All of us have a wonderful ideal. Only a small 
minority of us have found out the way in which 
that ideal can be realised. And there is only one 
way. ...” 

Suddenly Burnside stopped speaking. He 
raised himself a little upon his pillow, some colour 


Epilogue 357 

came into his face, some light into his eyes. The 
front door bell of the house could be heard ringing 
down below. 

The young doctor withdrew to a side of the 
room, and sat down upon a chair, with a watchful, 
interested expression on his face. The nurse 
suddenly knelt down. Then the door of the 
bedroom opened, and a tall, clean-shaven man in 
a cassock and surplice came in, bearing two silver 
vessels in his hand. Instinctively the duke 
knelt also. Some One Else had indeed come 
into the room. And in the light of that Real 
Presence many things were made clear, the 
solution of all difficulties flowed like balm into the 
awe-struck heart of the young man who had 
surrendered great possessions. 

God and Man, the Great Socialist, was there, 
among them, and a radiance not of this visible 
world, was seen by the spiritual vision of four 
souls. 

It was evening as the duke walked home to 
Chelsea. The clergyman who had brought the 
Blessed Sacrament to Burnside walked with him. 
Father Carr had remained by the bedside till the 
quiet end — a. peaceful, painless passing away. 
The duke had remained also, and his grief had 
become tempered by a strange sense of peace and 
rest, utterly unlike anything he had ever known 
before. It was his first experience of death. 
He had never seen a corpse before, and the strange 


358 


The Socialist 


waxen thing that lay upon the bed spoke to him — 
as the dead body must to all Christians — most 
eloquently of immortality. This shell was not 
Burnside at all. Burnside had gone, but he was 
more alive than ever before, alive in the happy 
place of waiting which we call Paradise. 

The duke had asked the priest — ^who, as it 
happened, had no other engagement — ^to come 
home and dine with him, and as they walked 
together by the river. Father Carr told him many 
things about the dead man — of a secret life of 
holiness and renunciation that few knew of, the 
simple story of a true Socialist and a very valiant 
soldier of Christ. 

“He saw very far indeed,” said Father Carr. 
“ I wish that all Socialists could see as far. For, 
as Plato pointed out long ago, we shall never 
have perfect conditions in this life until character 
is perfected. Burnside knew that as well as an 
imaginary and revolutionary Socialism, there 
is also a moral y that is, a Christian Socialism. 
Christianity paints no Utopias, describes to us 
no perfect conditions to be introduced into this 
world. It teaches us, on the contrary, to seek 
perfection in another world; but it desires at the 
same time to help us to struggle against earthly 
care and want, so that the kingdom of God, and 
therewith the true kingdom of man, embrac- 
ing as it does not only his spiritual but also 
his material life, may come upon earth and 
prosper.” 


359 


Epilogue 

“These aspects are new to me,” said the duke. 
“I must hear more of this.” 

“I can send you books,” replied Mr. Carr, 
“and you might come to some of the meetings of 
the Christian Social Union also. You will find 
all your present doubts and difficulties solved if 
you examine our contentions. As you have just 
told me, you are as convinced as ever as to the 
truth of a moderate and well-ordered Socialism. 
But you see, little progress being made and you 
are uneasy in your environment. I am a con- 
vinced Socialist also, but I see the truth — which 
is simply this. The nearer we all get to our Lord 
Jesus Christ, the nearer we get to Socialism. 
There is no other way.” 

It was late when Mr. Carr left the house in 
Chelsea, and the two men had talked long to- 
gether. The duke sat in his study alone, waiting 
for his wife’s return from the theatre — on matin6e 
days she did not return home for dinner. He 
was filled with a strange excitement, new and 
high thoughts possessed him, and he wanted to 
share them with her. 

At last he heard the soimd of her key in the 
lock and the jingle of her hansom as it drove 
away. He went out into the hall to meet her. 
A small round table with her soup and chicken 
had been placed by the library fire, and as she 
ate he told her of Burnside’s death, and with 
eager words poured out the ferment of thought 
within him. 


36 o 


The Socialist 


“ I don’t know if you quite see all I mean yet, 
dear,” he said, “and, of course, it ’s all crude and 
undigested with me as yet. But we must make 
more knowledge of it together.” 

An unconscious note of pleading had come into 
his voice as he looked at her. She sat before him 
tired by the long day’s work, but radiant in 
beauty and charm, and he saw so little of her 
now! — ^this, and the most priceless boon of all, 
it seemed that he must surrender for the good of 
the Cause. Then, suddenly, she left her seat 
and came to where he was, putting her arms round 
his neck and kissing him. 

“Darling!” she said. ''Together, that is the 
word. We have not been enough together of late 
years. But I had to do my work for the Cause 
just as you had. But now we shall be more 
together and happier than ever before. In a few 
weeks I shall leave the stage for ever. I shall 
have another work to do.” 

“You mean, darling ’ ’ 

“ I also have something to tell you”; and press- 
ing her warm cheek to his, with sweet faltering 
accents, she told him. 

He held her very close. The tears were in his 
eyes. 

“Oh, my love!” he whispered. “At last!” 


The End 


Selection from the 
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“ The most enthralling and interest-compelling 
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When It Was Dark 

The Story of a Great Conspiracy 

By GUY THORNE 

Author of ** A Lo8t Cause ’* 

Crown octavo. {By mail, $1.35.) Net, $1.20 

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A. Lost Cause 

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DROMINA 

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" A work of rare and exceptional quality " 


TOIL OF MEN 

(MENSCHENWEE) 

By ISRAEL QUERIDO 

In praise of Querido’s Menschenwee, a novel that 
recalls both the work of Balzac and of Zola, the 
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To refrain from superlatives in speaking of Men- 
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long settled in that city. The ardor of his tempera- 
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intellect, and the range of his sympathies entitle him 
to the place he now holds in the world of letters. 

Authorized Translation, Crown 8vo, $1,50 


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